3 Tips to Maximize In-App Guidance for Salesforce Lightning

One of my favorite new features is the In-App Guidance for Lightning Experience, included in Salesforce’s Winter 20 release. As both a budget-holder and technical architect, I’m always on the lookout for potential risks. Poor user adoption is one of the primary causes of IT project failure.

In-App Guidance is a tool that will support user adoption by educating users on how features in your org work and when to use them. It gives us the ability to “demystify” buttons, things, features and functionality that can make a huge difference for end-users that may otherwise go unused. It offers educational assistance so that users can feel good about “pushing the button”. You can leverage this feature to encourage more “a-ha” moments for your end-users, and reinforce messaging beyond Chatter or other internal communication methods.

The following tips will help set your users up for success when using In-App Guidance educational assistance:

1. Anticipate User Needs

Here are a few questions to ask/answer when designing an in-app guidance prompt. Note: If you are creating a “Floating” prompt (see #2), you will need to answer these in 120 characters or less:

• What is the appropriate use case for this button/field/report?
• Why does this feature exist? or  Why did you create this button?
• How is this going to save them steps or time?

2. Choose Type, Placement, and Customize Settings

• Type: There are two types to choose from
  • A Docked prompt is ideal for step-by-step instructions and accepts 4000 characters.
  • A Floating prompt is best for pointing out screen elements and accepts only 120 characters.
• Placement: If you have selected Floating, you will choose one of six screen placement options for where users will view your prompt.
• Schedule: Have a prompt that’s applicable only for certain window of time, particularly important, or likely to be forgotten? You can customize the date range that prompts are active, as well as configure their frequency.

Or…

3. You Can Be Selective About Configuring User Visibility

If your end users have the View Setup and Configuration standard permission, you can limit the display of prompts based on other standard and custom permissions. In-App Guidance offers easy educational assistance, delivered during the respective activity.

Summary: Empower Users and Drive Adoption

Ever created an awesome shortcut for end-users only to later learn that no one was using it? People are often afraid to click things they aren’t familiar with because they don’t know what will happen. Having the ability to prompt users to take certain actions, or to inform them about particular system functionality and customizations, is more than a communications tool. It’s a user confidence-builder.

Not only am I looking forward to rolling In-App Guidance out on a larger scale internally at IC and for our implementation customers, but we also have begun conversations about implementing it into our case management and customer experience enhancing Salesforce applications.