Salesforce Winter '27 Release: What Admins Need to Know
Salesforce Winter '27 is live: Agentforce on by default, Coworker rolling out, Profile Filtering enforced. What changed for admins and what to do first.
The Salesforce Winter '27 release is where AI stops being something you switch on. Agentforce is enabled by default for eligible orgs, Agentforce Coworker is appearing next to global search, and several long-running release updates are now enforced. If you only have an hour for release prep, spend it on the first three sections.
Salesforce lists October 12, 2026 as general availability, and Winter '27 is API version 68.0. Third-party guides disagree on the exact production wave dates, so check your instance on Salesforce Trust (Maintenance tab) rather than trusting a blog's calendar, including this one.
1. Winter '27 Turns Agentforce On by Default
The biggest change in Winter '27 isn't a feature. It's a default. Salesforce is enabling the Agentforce platform automatically for Lightning Experience orgs with Foundations on Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Edition, and for Agentforce 1 Edition orgs. New orgs get it at creation; existing orgs are being enabled on a rolling basis from early September 2026. The Agentforce setting on the Agentforce Agents page in Setup is being removed later in the release.
Enablement makes the tools available. It doesn't activate any agent, and Salesforce says there's no added cost or billing change. What it does mean is that anyone with the right permission can now build and activate agents without asking you to flip a switch first.
We've written a full audit checklist for Agentforce auto-enablement. The short version: audit who has the Manage AI Agents permission before someone builds something you didn't plan for.
2. Agentforce Coworker Is Rolling Out
Separately from the platform toggle, Salesforce has been auto-enabling Agentforce Coworker, the AI "Ask" experience next to global search, since August 10, 2026 for orgs with unmetered user-based AI seats. Coworker answers questions from data the user can already see, which means it surfaces any oversharing in your sharing model.
If users are asking you about a new Ask button, read our Agentforce Coworker setup guide for permissions, data sources, billing, and how to opt out.
3. Winter '27 Release Updates Now Enforced
These are the changes most likely to generate support tickets the Monday after your upgrade.
Profile Filtering. Users can now see only their own profile unless they have the View All Profiles permission. This shipped as a release update in Summer '26 and is enforced in Winter '27. Delegated admins, help desk users, and anyone who builds reports on users by profile are the people who'll notice. Grant View All Profiles through a permission set to the users who genuinely need it.
View Setup Audit Trail permission. There's now a dedicated View Setup Audit Trail permission, so you no longer need to hand out the much broader View Setup permission just so someone can see the audit trail. Existing access is preserved. Use the new permission to take View Setup away from compliance and security reviewers who only ever needed the audit trail.
Connected Apps. Our Spring '26 admin guide flagged Winter '27 as the Connected Apps retirement target. Sources now conflict: some say support ends in Winter '27, while others report that Winter '27 brings a release update to migrate connected apps to External Client Apps, with end of support pushed to Summer '27. We couldn't confirm either from an official Salesforce page, so check the Release Updates page in your org and the Winter '27 release notes. Either way, if you haven't inventoried your connected apps yet, that's still your most urgent integration task.
4. Agentforce Builder and Developer Changes
New metadata types at API 68.0. Winter '27 adds AiAgentDefinition and AiAgentDefinitionVersion metadata types. We confirmed both appear in the metadata type list of a Winter '27 org at API 68.0. If your DevOps pipeline deploys agents, test your package manifests at 68.0 before your production upgrade. Agents built on Agent Script deploy as AiAuthoringBundle.
Compare and merge agent versions. Salesforce's Winter '27 developer guide says Agentforce Builder can now compare and merge agent versions, which closes a real gap for teams iterating on the same agent.
MCP in both directions. Agents can call tools on Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, and external AI clients can call Agentforce agents as MCP tools. Salesforce says these calls run as the authenticated user, so sharing rules, field-level security, and Einstein Trust Layer policies still apply. MCP server tools from AgentExchange can be added directly in Agentforce Builder.
The Winter '27 release notes also add per-user credentials for external MCP servers. Older help pages say only no-auth and client-credentials OAuth are supported, so check the current docs for the server type you're connecting before you design around per-user access.
Agent Skills and Plugins. Salesforce launched a registry of reusable agent skills and a Salesforce plugin for coding agents like Claude Code. See our guide to Salesforce Agent Skills and Plugins.
Third-party agent orchestration. Agentforce can now orchestrate agents from other A2A-compliant ecosystems, or act as a subagent under an external orchestrator. This builds on the standards we covered in our agent interoperability guide.
5. Setup with Agentforce Gets More Useful
Setup with Agentforce (the natural-language Setup assistant) picked up three practical abilities:
- Turn Dynamic Actions on mobile on or off with a plain-language request
- Describe a related list you want and have it created, instead of hunting for the object and lookup field
- Mark Org Health and Usage metrics as Favorite or Hidden, sorted by severity
None of these are dramatic, but the related list one saves real clicks. Users need the Use Setup with Agentforce permission.
6. Everyday Admin Improvements
Keep Manual Shares When Transferring Records. A new option in Sharing Settings keeps manual shares when a record's owner changes. It's off by default and applies to all records once enabled. If your users constantly complain that sharing "disappears" after an ownership change, this is the fix.
More flexible list view inline editing. Two optional settings in User Interface Settings: remove the dependency on page layouts for inline editing, and allow inline edits in list views that show multiple record types. Both are off by default.
User field history tracking is GA. You can track up to 20 fields on the User object. The setting itself is still labelled Beta in User Management Settings, which is confusing but expected.
Follow button in the Dynamic Highlights Panel. You can now add the native Follow button to the Dynamic Highlights Panel.
Reports (all Beta):
- Preview records from a Lightning report in a sidebar without leaving the report
- Embed Lightning reports and dashboards in LWR Experience Cloud sites (previously Aura only)
- "Common Rows Only" for joined reports, which shows only records that appear in every block (Salesforce Support has to switch it on)
7. Flow Builder Updates
Flow Builder gets intent-based element categories, smarter search, multi-record screen flows launched from list views, a Time screen component, and a reusable Flow Test Mode in beta. The test mode is the one to watch: reusable test inputs make it far less painful to retest a flow after a change.
What to Tell Your Users
Most release notes are written for admins. Your users need about four sentences. Here's a version you can paste into a Slack channel or email the week of your upgrade:
- "You may see a new Ask button next to search." That's Agentforce Coworker. It answers questions using only records you can already see, and its answers should be checked like any other draft. (Only send this if Coworker is on in your org.)
- "Inline editing in list views may work in more places." Only if you've enabled the new User Interface Settings.
- "You can follow records from the highlights panel." If you've added the Follow button to your Dynamic Highlights Panel.
- "If you used to see other users' profiles, you may not anymore." Profile Filtering is now enforced. Tell people where to ask for access rather than letting them file a bug.
Keep it short. Users don't need to know about metadata types or MCP. They need to know what looks different on Monday and who to ask.
Who Should Read Which Section
Not every Winter '27 change matters to every team. A quick triage:
| Role | Read first |
|---|---|
| Admin (solo or small team) | Sections 1, 2, 3, then the checklist |
| Security or compliance reviewer | Sections 1 and 3, plus our auto-enable checklist |
| Salesforce developer or DevOps owner | Section 4 |
| Service Cloud admin | Sections 1, 2, and our Einstein Bots upgrade guide |
| Reporting and analytics owner | Section 6 |
Your Winter '27 Admin Checklist
- Check your upgrade date on Salesforce Trust
- Audit who holds Manage AI Agents (checklist)
- Check Agentforce Coworker status in Setup (guide)
- Grant View All Profiles to users who need it before Profile Filtering surprises them
- Move audit-trail-only users to the new View Setup Audit Trail permission
- Inventory connected apps and plan External Client App migrations
- Test agent deployment manifests at API 68.0
- Decide whether to enable Keep Manual Shares When Transferring Records
Frequently Asked Questions
When did Salesforce Winter '27 go live? Salesforce lists October 12, 2026 as the Winter '27 general availability date, with production orgs upgraded in waves around it. Your exact upgrade date depends on your instance, which you can check on Salesforce Trust.
What API version is Salesforce Winter '27? Winter '27 is API version 68.0. Some new metadata types, including AiAgentDefinition and AiAgentDefinitionVersion, are only available when you retrieve or deploy at 68.0.
Is Agentforce turned on automatically in Winter '27? For eligible orgs, yes. Salesforce is enabling the Agentforce platform by default for Lightning orgs with Foundations or Agentforce 1 Edition. Enablement makes the tools available but doesn't activate any agent or start consumption.
What is Profile Filtering in Winter '27? Profile Filtering limits users to seeing only their own profile unless they have the View All Profiles permission. It shipped as a release update in Summer '26 and is enforced in Winter '27.
Keep reading:
📬 Enjoyed this article?
Subscribe to our free weekly digest — AI tools, Salesforce tips, and prompts every week.