Upgrade from v4 to v5

The Coveo for Salesforce components included in the package are built using the Salesforce Aura Components Framework and the Coveo JavaScript Search Framework. In the Coveo for Salesforce v4 packages, these components stored the HTML of your pages inside Visualforce components within Salesforce.

As of the Coveo for Salesforce v5 release, the HTML content of your pages is now being stored inside a new custom object called Page Content.

Additionally, the Coveo Visualforce (Classic) components included in the package have been deprecated.

Lastly, the Coveo VisitorIdAccessor Lightning component has been replaced by the new ClientIdAccessor Lightning component.

Salesforce no longer allows managed packages such as Coveo for Salesforce to create, write, or delete Visualforce components programmatically using Apex code. Although a managed package can still read from a Visualforce component, Salesforce now recommends this content be stored within a custom object instead.

This change also affects the following Lightning Web component:

Other than how the HTML content of a page is stored under the hood, there should be no visible impact to the user experience.

Specifically, to limit any visible impact on existing implementations, Coveo components will continue to read the HTML from existing Visualforce components, just like before. However, when a page containing a Coveo component is opened for the first time, the package will try to copy the HTML from the existing Visualforce component to the new Page Content custom object. Provided the current user has the appropriate permissions on the new object, the page will now be stored and read from the Page Content custom object.

All newly created pages will use the Page Content custom object from now on to store HTML content.

As an administrator, you may need to give users new access to existing pages or newly created ones.

For example, in order to create or edit an existing page using the Coveo Interface Editor, you’ll need to set object permissions for the new Page Content custom object.

You will also need to provide field-level security access on the fields of that object.

If you’re unable to delete a page, for example, you try to delete a page but nothing happens after the confirmation message, that means the page still exists as a Visualforce component.

An error message indicating the name of the Visualforce component should appear in your browser console.

Due to the copy mechanism that was put in place to ensure backward compatibility, in order to delete a page that still exists as a Visualforce component, you must manually delete the Visualforce component first. This operation can no longer be handled by the managed package.

Once the Visualforce component has been deleted, you will be able to delete your page.

Your Coveo Classic components will continue to load and work like before.

However, since our managed package can no longer be used to create or edit Visualforce components, that means you can no longer use the Interface Editor to create or modify your Classic search pages. The Interface Editor for the Coveo Insight Panel Classic Component, Coveo Search (that is, Full Search page), and Coveo Case Creation components has been disabled.

As of the Coveo for Salesforce v5 release, Coveo Classic components must now be updated manually.

Since the visitorId query parameter is deprecated and has been replaced by the clientId in newer versions of the Coveo UI libraries, the component was replaced to reflect this change. For more information, see What’s the client ID?.

If you’re currently using the Coveo VisitorIdAccessor Lightning component, we recommend replacing it with the new ClientIdAccessor component at your earliest convenience to maintain up-to-date analytics and to improve visit tracking capabilities.

In short, you will be missing out on the latest updates, features, and potential bug fixes. However, there’s no pressure to upgrade to v5 right away. Coveo will continue to support v4 until February 2026.

It’s very difficult to roll back a Coveo for Salesforce package after it has been upgraded. We strongly recommend that you read the documentation, verify if the changes will affect your implementation, for example, by testing it in a sandbox first, and plan accordingly before upgrading your package.

You may continue to use v4. Coveo will continue to support v4 until February 2026. Depending on the situation, we may decide that the best course of action to continue support is to upgrade to v5.

For more information, see Product lifecycle.