Even the most technically elegant Salesforce solutions are rendered useless if nobody uses them. Ensuring that good technical solutions are supported by a smooth user experience is an essential part of designing and releasing new Salesforce functionality. In this article, we’ll unpack:
- The business case for incorporating good foundational UX practices
- UX principles that you can apply across your Salesforce Lightning Apps
- Specific ways to leverage Lightning Experience to enhance UX
- A simple checklist admins can use to validate that their LRPs meet quality standards
As an admin, you can begin to commit these UX principles to memory and start to ensure that quality assurance on any new Lightning interface is a standard part of your testing process when introducing new features into your org.
A Business Case for Good UX
Have you ever released something into Salesforce expecting it to be a hit, and then adoption falls flat? Facilitating effective change management practices can help ensure that functionality provides value to users instead of overwhelming them with change. One important component of smoothing the adoption process is ensuring that new functionality fits seamlessly into current ways of working and feels intuitive to users.
Users shouldn’t have to struggle to find the correct clickpath, search for components on pages, or ask how to execute an action if it is unclear–designing interfaces that are navigable and easily understood helps to ensure that businesses save time and headaches. The opportunity cost of poorly constructed user interfaces (the cost of users and tech teams spent asking and answering unnecessary questions that could have been avoided with a quality UX) can be high.
Simply put, the business case for designing high-quality user interfaces from the start is strong. Quality interfaces that align with current ways of working and provide adequate in-app help can help to prevent:
- Excessive time spent by users trying to navigate new interfaces when they could be doing value-adding work
- Frustration for users in using systems that may cause them to manage data off of Salesforce because “it’s easier”
- Time spent by admins and tech teams answering questions and training users on how to use new functionality
- Money lost in designing and delivering Salesforce solutions that go under-utilised in practice.
Principles of Effective User Interfaces
Not all UIs are created equally. The Lightning Experience user interface principles introduced in the Salesforce Lightning Design System help to create a mental model that admins can use to design effective interfaces in Salesforce.
Salesforce interfaces should be:
- Simple: Interfaces should be clear of superfluous components and highly navigable, presenting only the necessary components at the necessary times.
- Consistent: Pages across an application should be consistent, offering users a predictable experience that they can get to know and trust.
- Intuitive: Interfaces should be intuitive to use, with components being logically grouped and placed in instinctive parts of the page. Help text should support adoption of features.
- Accessible: Interfaces should follow web accessibility guidelines and be usable by a wide range of audience members.
- Adaptable: Pages should be adaptable to different devices and across both mobile and desktop experiences.
- Performant: Pages should be quick to load.
Keeping these design principles in mind can help to ensure that Salesforce Lightning Apps are both easy-to-use and easy-to-understand.
Leveraging Lightning Experience for User Experience
Now that you have a conceptual model for how to design high-quality user interfaces, let’s dig into the available tools in Lightning Experience to help us actualize a positive experience for users. See the table below for a set of ideas on how to configure your LRPs to improve UX:
- Simple:
- Include (only) relevant fields and buttons on the highlights panel.
- Use dynamic forms, tabs, and field sections to group relevant fields and reduce scrolling on the page.
- Use Dynamic and Enhanced Related Lists to display only relevant child records.
- Use visibility rules to conditionally display fields, tabs, and components when relevant to the user.
- Consistent:
- Ensure that fields are configured to follow consistent spelling and capitalization conventions.
- Use a common LRP template for all objects in an app (unless there is a specific reason not to for a certain object, i.e. Cases).
- Enforce similar tab structures and default tab norms across an app.
- Place like-components in the same place across LRPs within an app (i.e. place files in the right-side component).
- Intuitive:
- Include Salesforce standard components (i.e. Chatter, Activities, Files) across all LRPs in the same location.
- Include path component for objects with a stage field.
- Include guidance for success text on path components.
- Use help text for any fields that may not be immediately clear to users.
- Use Report Charts to visualise information where possible.
- Ensure fields that should not be editable to users are controlled by Field-Level Security or made Read Only on the page layout.
- Use In-App Guidance to support adoption where appropriate.
- Accessible:
- Ensure any custom components (i.e. LWCs) adhere to the Salesforce Lightning Design System accessibility guidelines.
- Adaptable:
- Build desktop and mobile-specific LRPs that ensure smooth UX, no matter the device users access the system with.
- Performant:
- Ensure that LRP load times are within a reasonable limit (and take steps to reduce LRP load times, if necessary).
The Admin’s LRP Checklist (Download the Resource)
Having a set of guiding principles can help steer the design of new LRPs towards a high-quality user experience. However, once Lightning Record Pages are configured, it’s also important to execute quality assurance to make sure that Lightning Experience features have been well-utilized and that no inconsistencies are present on the LRP before delivery. The checklist below can help to ensure that your LRPs add value to users:
Admin’s LRP Checklist
- The LRP structure is consistent with other pages in the app ✔️
- Salesforce standard components (i.e. Chatter, Activities, Files) are utilized where relevant ✔️
- Common components are located in the same place across LRPs within the app ✔️
- Useful fields are added to the Highlights panel ✔️
- Only relevant buttons are displayed in the Highlights panel ✔️
- Search Layout and Compact Layout are configured to ensure relevant fields are displayed when hovering over related records ✔️
- Tabs are used to reduce the volume of fields on any page view ✔️
- Tab order and the default tab are consistent across LRPs in the app ✔️
- Field sections are used to group like-fields ✔️
- The fields on the page are balanced ✔️
- Help text is available for relevant fields ✔️
- Fields follow a common capitalization norm ✔️
- Fields are written with the same spelling convention (i.e. UK vs US spelling) ✔️
- Related lists display the appropriate controls (i.e. “New”) ✔️
- Related lists display useful fields ✔️
- Report chart(s) have been used to visually display information, where relevant ✔️
- Path component has been used to visually display stage, where relevant ✔️
- Visibility Rules are utilized to conditionally display fields or components, where relevant ✔️
- Any fields that should not be editable by the user are set to Read Only ✔️
- The LRP loads in an acceptable amount of time ✔️
To help admins and tech teams execute QA on LRPs, I’ve developed a reusable checklist template that ensures new Salesforce interfaces meet certain quality standards. This template can help your team, and especially more junior employees, make sure that their LRPs meet the mark.
Want to use the checklist in practice? Check out our downloadable resource that you can use to QA the user experience of your interfaces when releasing new Lightning Record Pages.
Summary
Designing and delivering Salesforce solutions with sound UX doesn’t have to be challenging. By following a set of standard design principles and leveraging the power of Lightning Experience, admins can release high-quality user interfaces that delight users and help them do their work more effectively and more efficiently!
Comments: