Lightning record pages are some of the most versatile tools you have as a Salesforce Admin. They are what your users are probably spending most of their time looking at in Salesforce. A good record page can make or break your Salesforce; however, a great one will be seamless!
In fact, a good Lightning record page will make your users not even notice that they get what they need immediately and every single time. However, a bad record page will be immediately noticed – by complaints about poor or missing data, confused users, and people even sending those alarming, but often incorrect, emails saying: “This field was deleted!”
One of my favorite features of Lightning record pages is the Rich Text component. They’re very powerful in their simplicity, as rich text boxes are just that – a box of text. Type in anything you want, highlight things your users struggle with, announce new features or changes, remind them of upcoming steps, and more!
In the way that a simple tool like a hammer can be used to help build a house, rich text boxes are a very simple tool that can help your users – right when and where they need it.
Use Cases
1. Banners and Warnings: Users are always rushing, trying to make progress, move forward, or close business – and when rushing, mistakes may happen. They grab the wrong lead or neglect to glance at a field. Banners and warnings are easy to add. When combined with conditional visibility, they give you a fast and easy way to share important information with the user.
In this example, the user doesn’t even have to navigate to the Details tab to see the current status of this Lead. This is a great option when you have certain records that users should only look at but not update.
2. Change Alerts: Let your users know that something has changed or will be changing. This also helps reduce the amount of time you spend answering questions about changes!
3. Provide Resources: Provide your users with links to training or supplemental frequently asked information.
4. Escalations and Critical Priority: Provide a visual reminder of high priority things in Salesforce that should be resolved quickly.
5. Provide Levity: This is especially fun if you’re working with a group of first-time Salesforce users. Create your message using a small font and hide it somewhere less obvious.
How to Add a Rich Text Component to a Lightning Page
- Navigate to the Lightning Page Editor, either by going to Setup > Object Manager > (The name of the object you want) > Lightning Record Pages > (Name of the record page) > Edit or, by navigating to any single record, and then clicking on the gear icon, and Edit Page.
- In the Components Panel on the left, grab the Rich Text component, and drag and drop it to the place you want it on the page.
- Use the Rich Text Editor on the right to create your message. You can create hyperlinks, use bold, underline, and modify the font formatting as needed.
Component Visibility
Not every message needs to be seen all the time. In the example above, we only want that message to appear when a case is a high priority case. If the case is a medium or low priority, the message should not be visible. We can accomplish this by using component visibility.
You can find Set Component Visibility on the bottom right section of the component editor. Toggle these options to be based on record criteria – the device the current user is on. If you want a message to only be visible to users under a certain profile, use the Advanced tab for additional filtering features.
Note: Component Visibility is also available for other components, not just rich text. This feature can be added to most components, so be sure to check it out!
Summary
And that’s all there is to it! Rich text components are one of those features that (at least, in this admins opinion) are so simple that they’re often overlooked. We assume something should be more complicated, but that’s just not true!
Rich text components are a fast and easy way to give information to your users, reduce the question load on your admins, and otherwise help keep your Salesforce org running smoothly.