What Stood Out to Our Team Ahead of Connections 2026

Connections is right around the corner, and Salesforce has already started previewing several upcoming Commerce, OMS, and AI-related announcements ahead of the event. A few of those updates immediately caught the attention of our technical team because they address the kinds of B2B commerce requests we hear from clients all the time.

We asked a few members of the Saltbox Mgmt team what they’re paying attention to as we head into Connections 2026. Here’s what stood out most across Commerce, Order Management, and Search.

Multi-Cart and Round-Trip Quoting Finally Move Closer to Standard

For years, multi-cart workflows and quote-to-cart experiences have lived firmly in the “custom build” category for most B2B implementations. That’s why the announcement around Multi-Cart and Round-Trip Quoting generated some immediate reactions internally.

Ashley Wright, VP of Technical Delivery, called out both features as especially interesting because they represent common B2B requirements that have historically required significant customization.

“Round-Trip Quoting and Multi-Cart are exciting, too. They're pretty common B2B feature requests and until now have always required custom build. Looking forward to seeing what we get OOTB and how configurable/extensible those features are made to be.”

Rob Snyder, Functional Lead, also noticed new Multiple Carts components already appearing in Experience Builder and immediately started connecting the dots around what that could mean for native B2B storefront experiences.

“I am seeing a few new Multiple Carts components in Experience Builder right now 👀”

The biggest question now is how configurable these capabilities will actually be once teams start implementing them in production environments. If Salesforce delivers strong extensibility alongside the core functionality, this could reduce the amount of custom commerce work required for many B2B buying flows.

B2B Search Extensibility Could Open New Doors

Search also generated attention from the team, particularly the new endpoint extensibility updates for B2B Search.

Ashley highlighted the potential upside here, especially for teams that want more flexibility without completely rebuilding search functionality themselves.

“I'm excited to hear more about the new endpoints extensibility of B2B Search. Curious to see how much we will actually be able to customize search functionality without rebuilding from scratch.”

Search relevance, synonyms, weighted attributes, and predictive functionality all continue to be major priorities for B2B commerce experiences. Greater extensibility could give teams more control over buyer experiences while still staying aligned with native platform capabilities.

What We’ll Be Watching During Connections

A lot of the previewed announcements heading into Connections 2026 sound promising on paper, especially for B2B organizations trying to reduce custom development while still delivering flexible buyer experiences.

The real test will come once the event kicks off and teams get hands-on with the features and understand:

• How configurable the new functionality actually is

• Where extensibility begins and ends

• Which use cases still require custom development

• How quickly these features mature after GA

For now, the biggest takeaway from our team is simple: Salesforce appears to be investing more heavily in native B2B commerce functionality that customers have been asking for for a long time.

And if Multi-Cart and Round-Trip Quoting truly deliver out of the box, a lot of implementation teams are going to be paying close attention.