Monitor, Identify, and Keep Your Salesforce Automations on the Up-to-Date API Version

Salesforce automation tools streamline complex processes, actioning higher-value activities and saving team members valuable time. These powerful tools help teams with sales efficiency, administrative tasks, customer satisfaction, management processes, and effective business process automation. However, their reliability and performance depend on a less obvious factor: keeping their API versions current.

Ensuring these tools are always up-to-date is critical to optimizing their effectiveness. If your API version is outdated, it could hinder automation capabilities such as causing slower performance, or result in errors when updating records or executing record updates. 

This guide will provide valuable strategies and industry insights to help you keep your Salesforce automation tools up to date, avoid tech debt, and ensure seamless operation for sales reps, admins, and other users.

Why keeping Salesforce API versions updated matters

Salesforce releases updates three times a year. With each update, the platform’s API version is incremented, introducing new features, performance enhancements, and bug fixes. While most Salesforce updates automatically, specific components—including your automation tools—do not. These include:

• Apex classes
• Apex triggers
• Aura components
• Flows
• Lightning components
• Visualforce pages

Failing to update these components leaves your organization exposed to several risks:

1. Deprecation risks: Older API versions eventually lose support, leading to potential failures in automated workflows. For example, outdated Flows may stop functioning, disrupting customer journeys and real-time processes.
2. Feature incompatibility: New API versions bring enhanced capabilities, such as advanced Flow Builder tools and improved Lightning Components. Without updates, you miss out on these efficiencies, and your automation may not work as intended.
3. Performance degradation: Each new API version includes bug fixes and optimizations. Staying on an older version can lead to slower execution, bottlenecks, or outright workflow errors.

Monitoring API versions: A critical step often overlooked

Monitoring API versions isn’t just about knowing what’s outdated—it’s about identifying risks before they become problems. To ensure seamless operation, you need visibility into the API versions your automation tools rely on. This requires robust metadata management and tools to track and alert you to outdated components. Having established why API updates are critical, let’s explore how proactive monitoring and updates can help you stay ahead.

Here’s how to ensure effective monitoring:

• Use a metadata management tool like Elements.cloud to audit the API versions used in your Org.
• Set up dashboards or reports to track automation components and flag those on older API versions.
• Regularly schedule API version reviews, particularly after Salesforce’s major seasonal updates.

When and how to Perform an API Version Review?

It is advisable to check API versions in the following situations:

• After a major Salesforce release (e.g., Summer ’23, Winter ’23) when the Org’s underlying version is upgraded.
• When you notice performance issues or bugs with older automation, such as failures in Flow and Apex, Process Builder, or Workflow rules.
• ​When planning to onboard or train new admins, developers or sales representatives to ensure the understanding of more advanced workflow automation. Updating outdated API versions is a valuable exercise to help them familiarize themselves with your Org’s advanced software and a great way to teach them about API versioning and its impact on business process automation.
• During regular technical debt assessments as part of your Org’s overall health check (more on that in this solution guide).

Monitoring sets the stage for action. Once you’ve identified outdated components, the next step is updating them.

Prerequisites

To conduct an API version review, ensure you have access to these Salesforce Automation Tools in your Org:

• Salesforce Metadata Management license
• Synced Salesforce Org into Metadata Dictionary
• Perform API Version Review Using Elements.cloud

Here’s how you can monitor and upgrade API versions of key Salesforce automation using Elements.cloud:

Step 1: Understand your API version technical debt

Open Analytics 360 from your Metadata Dictionary. Navigate to the Technical Debt Dashboard, where API version details for key automation components (Flows, Apex Classes, Triggers, Visualforce pages, Aura, and Lightning components) are displayed.

Review the chart showing the API versions across your Org to identify the scale of outdated API versions.

Step 2: Create a Custom View of Metadata

Go to your Salesforce Metadata Dictionary. Use the Custom View of Metadata feature to create the following list:

Metadata types:

• Apex classes
• Apex triggers
• Aura components
• Flows
• Lightning components
• Visualforce pages

Attributes:

• Name
• API name
• Full API name
• Metadata type
• Description
• API version
• Full path

Sort the list by API Version, starting from the lowest version, to prioritize upgrades.

Step 3: Identify risky managed packages

You cannot change or even see the apex classes, flows, and other automation provided through the installed managed packages. But we can detect the API versions for most of these components.

The ‘Full path’ attribute for metadata is an Elements-unique attribute that helps dictate the metadata component’s location in the metadata dictionary’s default structure. However, it is also beneficial for filtering.

In your custom view for outdated API versions, filter the ‘Full path’ attribute to ‘contains’: ‘managed packages’.

This will list all components on outdated API versions (look for API versions in red/orange color) belonging to the managed packages.

Using the ‘Full API’ attribute, you can understand which managed packages contain outdated and unmaintained automation. You can contact your package provider for an explanation or consider removing the risky package from your organization.

Step 4: Identify outdated automation

Now, focus on components that you can control. Exclude all managed package components from your list view.

In your custom view for outdated API versions, filter the ‘Full path’ attribute to ‘does not contain’: ‘managed packages’.

The list is already sorted to show components from the lowest API version to the highest.

Step 5: Document action

From the custom view, bulk-select the metadata components with outdated API versions. Then, bulk-create user stories from the selected components to capture the work required to upgrade them to the latest API version.

You might want to investigate if the flow, apex class, trigger, lightning component, etc., is still being used and relevant to the business. Components on extremely old API versions were built years ago, and it is valid to review whether they are still needed at all.

You can read this solution guide on how to conduct such reviews.

Assign captured stories to the appropriate team members and link them to Jira, if needed, using Elements.cloud’s integration capabilities. You can then pick up those stories from your backlog for development and deliver them when there is capacity.

Conclusion

Keeping your Salesforce automation up to date with the latest API versions is more than a maintenance task—it’s a strategic approach to ensuring efficiency, reliability, and scalability across your organization. Outdated API versions can lead to workflow failures, performance bottlenecks, and missed opportunities to leverage Salesforce’s most advanced features.

Keep your organisation ahead of the game using tools like Elements.cloud to review your API versions, prioritize updates, and eliminate risks. A well-maintained Salesforce Org empowers your team to work smarter, deliver exceptional customer experiences, and drive meaningful results.