Keeping pace with Salesforce’s evolution is crucial for every administrator. With three major updates annually, Spring, Summer, and Winter, Salesforce continually enhances its platform, introducing cutting-edge features and improvements that empower users worldwide.
For administrators, maximizing these releases becomes second nature once you understand the fundamentals and implementation strategies. Through the Release Updates page, administrators can access and implement critical updates that may impact their organization. Given that these updates can affect existing customizations, it’s essential to review and test them thoroughly before deployment.
As we step into 2025, in the Spring ’25 Release, Salesforce is making significant strides in global standardization with one of its most important updates. This transformation comes as part of Salesforce’s ongoing commitment to providing robust, internationally compliant solutions for businesses worldwide. The transition to International Components for Unicode (ICU) Locale Formats represents a fundamental shift in how Salesforce handles data formatting across its platform, ensuring organizations can operate more effectively in an increasingly globalized business landscape.
Why Is Salesforce Making This Change?
Salesforce is switching from Java Development Kit (JDK) locale formats to International Components for Unicode (ICU) locale formats. This change improves the consistency and accuracy of how dates, times, numbers, and currencies are displayed across regions and languages, aligning with international best practices.
The system’s AI engine doesn’t just extract text; it understands context and can identify relevant information regardless of where it appears in the document. This capability dramatically reduces the need for template-specific configurations and makes the solution much more flexible than traditional OCR systems.
Why ICU?
JDK formats, while functional, aren’t regularly updated and don’t fully align with global standards. ICU, an internationally recognized standard, ensures:
Improved Consistency: Uniform data formatting across all platforms and devices, ensuring a seamless user experience.
Enhanced Accuracy: Precise localization reflecting regional preferences, which is crucial for international operations.
Global Readiness: alignment with international standards, facilitating smoother interactions with global clients and partners.
Who Will It Affect?
Organizations created before Winter ’20 (October 2019) that have not enabled the ICU Locale Formats release update.
What is Required on Your Side?
To ensure a smooth transition:
- Review: Assess your current data and customizations for compatibility with the new ICU formats.
- Test: Utilize Salesforce’s testing environment to observe how the changes affect your organization.
- Update: Make necessary adjustments to custom code or integrations to align with the ICU standards.
When Is This Happening?
ICU locale formats Adoption testing will be available in sandbox organizations until Spring ’25 (Jan-Feb 2025).
Important Notes:
- In case additional time is needed for testing and preparation, you can defer until the Summer ’25 release that is scheduled to be deployed across various instances on the following dates: May 16, 2025, June 6, 2025, and June 13, 2025.
- To use the ICU locale formats, Apex classes, Apex triggers, and Visualforce pages that reference locale formats must use API version 45.0 or later. If your organization contains items on API version 44.0 or earlier, the API version needs to be updated to avoid data integrity issues and end-user confusion. Updating the API version can include structural and behavioral changes for objects and other code components.
- Orgs created in Winter ’20 or later have ICU locale formats enabled by default.
This transition to ICU locale formats marks a crucial milestone in Salesforce’s evolution as a truly global platform. While the change may require some initial effort from organizations to implement, the long-term benefits of improved data consistency, enhanced global compatibility, and streamlined international operations make this update invaluable.
As we move through 2025, organizations should prioritize this transition to ensure they’re well-positioned to leverage Salesforce’s enhanced global capabilities.
The time to act is now – whether you’re managing a small team or a multinational corporation, ensuring your Salesforce instance is ICU-compliant will be crucial for maintaining smooth operations in our increasingly connected world.
(More information about ICU International Locale Formats can be found here: Salesforce Documentation)