Dreamforce '24 / Winter '25 New Feature Integration Status
Unsuprisingly, I've had a number of people already reach out this week asking whether and when some of the big new dev features being announced at Dreamforce '24 — and as part of the upcoming Winter '25 platform update — will be supported by Illuminated Cloud 2. The respective answers are "absolutely" and "ASAP". In fact, knowing that Winter '25 includes more significant new features and enhancements than in the typical seasonal platform release, I'd started on the corresponding IC2 updates even before heading toward Dreamforce '24 this week.
I think the following specific features and enhancements are driving the most interest, so I'll share the status for each in turn:
The new feature likely getting the most attention here at Dreamforce '24 is Agentforce for Developers, a significant evolution of the feature previously known as Einstein for Developers. IC2 has provided a first-class integration of Einstein for Developers since it was first released by Salesforce, and I'm working now to provide the same type of tight integration with the new features included in Agentforce for Developers.
What makes this a bit tricky is that the API for this feature is not documented by Salesforce so, as with Einstein for Developers support, I'm having to reverse-engineer things a bit. Thankfully things are looking pretty straightforward, though, and I've already reached out to my Salesforce contacts on that team with my open questions based on what I've seen so far.
Given that this feature was moved to full GA at the start of Dreamforce '24, I will be trying to include an integration in (fingers crossed) one of the next few builds of IC2. If you're interested, you can follow progress here.
Salesforce's second take on local development support for LWC is already looking outstanding! Given that I've been building and maintaining a pretty significant personal LWC-based application, believe me when I say that I'm just as excited about it as everyone else. Not having to clear caches and force-refresh constantly just to dial in formatting, styling, and (minor) logic updates will be a tremendous productivity boost!
For what it's worth, you can already use this feature right now in Winter '25 pre-release sandbox orgs and preview scratch orgs. There's no first-class integration in IC2 yet — that's exactly what I'll be adding as part of the IC2 Winter '25 update — but if you start the local dev server as documented via the feature link above and make changes to LWC components in IC2, you'll see those changes reflected immediately in the local app preview. Note that you'll likely want to disable deploy-on-save while working in this manner, something I plan to automate when actively working against a local dev server in the upcoming IC2 update.
This is something that has been requested frequently, both of Salesforce generally and IC2 specifically.
Winter '25 includes an initial (in my opinon, alpha) level of support for TypeScript-based LWC components. I've already updated IC2 locally to recognize and support TypeScript-based LWC logic in addition to the existing ES6-based LWC logic, but I'm seeing numerous significant omissions in the underlying support that will likely make this a neat-to-play-with-but-not-quite-ready feature in the Winter '25 timeframe. As Salesforce evolves and matures the feature I will, of course, enhance IC2 respectively until both have reached a feature-complete state.
Next Steps
There are obviously some very compelling and long-desired features and enhancements in Winter '25 — or in the case of Agentforce for Developers, immediately — and, barring unforeseen circumstances such as missing or restricted integration points, IC2 will be updated to include full, first-class support for all of them.
As stated above, most of these will be integated in the Winter '25 IC2 update, currently targeted for October 14, 2024. If possible — and it makes sense based on the relative timing — I will try to include support for Agentforce for Developers in an earlier release of IC2 since that feature is already GA and not contingent on Winter '25 / API v62.0. Please keep an eye on the linked issue tracker entries for more detailed information.