How to Create Records With Global Actions in Salesforce

Whenever I enter a new org where a manager complains, “People keep skipping required fields!” or “I don’t know where these records are coming from, how are they making these?” the answer is almost always “Global Actions”. 

The response I usually get from this is, “What’s a Global Action?” – 100% of the time, for over ten years. I’ve never had a single non-admin know what “Global Action” means, even though some of them are, in fact, using them! This feature of Salesforce is so small that almost nobody ever dedicates time to think about what it really can do. 

In this post, we’re going to go over what is great about Global Actions, why you, as the admin, should pay attention to them, and five of my favorite simple things you can set up right away. 

What Is a Global Action in Salesforce?

A Global Action in Salesforce is an action that a User can complete, launched from the Global Header in Salesforce. Global, in this case, is referring to the same thing – always available.

See that plus sign in the top right corner in the screenshot below? That’s your Global Actions:

If you hover over it, you’ll even see the words “Global Actions” appear:

A few basic things are set up by default in most Salesforce Orgs. With the exception of “Email”, all of these items are creating new records:

You might think, “what’s the problem here? My users already have permission to create those things. This seems fine to me.” While you might be mostly right, you’re probably only mostly right. When it comes to data hygiene and Salesforce, “mostly right” is not going to cut it.

Why Should Admins Think About Global Actions?

The idea behind Global Actions is that they’re fast – the user doesn’t have to navigate away from their current screen to complete a Global Action. 

Let’s take an example of a Sales rep currently chatting on the phone with a potential customer about an Opportunity. The Sales rep is on the Opportunity Screen, editing the record with a new Amount. The potential customer casually mentions, “My friend at XYZ might be interested in your product; you should give them a call.”

The sales rep needs to take down the information for the new customer but doesn’t want to leave the Opportunity edit screen. It would be best to add it directly to Salesforce rather than saving that data in a notes app where it can get lost or forgotten. 

This is essentially the exact use case for Global Actions. Notice in this screenshot below that the Opportunity is still open to edit, and a new Lead Record is being created at the same time:

Now, I hear what you’re saying: “Stacy, this seems fine. I see nothing wrong here.” Remember what I said about being mostly right? This is just mostly fine. Think back to the complaint that I mentioned earlier in this post. A manager said, “People keep skipping required fields!”

Consider that screenshot – what are you not seeing? What is missing in the Lead Creation? A single character – a tiny red asterisk next to the Email field. 99% of the time, these sales reps are creating Leads the normal way, on the Lead Tab and then “New”. But every once in a while, someone uses a Global Action to create a record, and nobody realizes until later that a new record exists that is missing a required field: Email.

So, what happened here? If Email is required on the new Lead Page, why is it not required here? 

Global Action Page Layouts

That’s right: Global Actions don’t have the same Page Layouts that a regular record uses. They’re completely separate from the Lighting Record Page or the Classic Page Layout. Making something required on your Lightning Record Page or Page Layout will do absolutely nothing for your Global Actions. These two images are from the same org:

Global Actions in Setup

So now you’re probably thinking (sarcastically), “Another page to manage?? Great.” Fortunately, this is one of the easiest things to fix in Salesforce, as it’s not hidden. It’s not even named anything strange. Just navigate to setup and type in “Global Actions”. There are only two options after that.

The first section, conveniently called “Global Actions,” is where you can see all the actions that exist in your org. If you click on each, you can edit their layout and also set predefined field values. 

This is very helpful when you think about the people using these actions: They’re multi-tasking, using this because they need to do something quickly and don’t want to be slowed down by filling out a bunch of unnecessary fields.

Let’s click on “New Lead” since we were talking about them earlier. We’re going to edit the layout and some predefined field values:

Click “Edit Layout” and you’ll see how minimal this page truly is:

There are only five fields, and an Email is not required. We can set that to required, but another important field on Leads is Lead Source. It’s not yet on the page, so let’s add that too. We’re going to make it required as well since it’s quite important:

Salesforce recommends eight or fewer fields on Global Action Layouts in order to keep things concise for your users. You can try to add more, but you’ll get this warning:

The warning here also mentions what we’re going to talk about next – predefined field values. This is my personal favorite feature in all of Global Actions. So click “Save”, and let’s go back to that original Lead Global Action and move on to Predefined Field Values.

Predefined Field Values

Predefined Field Values are exactly what they sound like: A preset value for a field that may or may not be visible on the page layout. 

You might have noticed on the earlier layout that I didn’t include “Status” on there. That’s because a Lead’s Status should always be “New” when first created, and the Source is almost always going to be “Sales”. 

I can save a little time for my users by filling out these fields in advance on their behalf.

Keep in mind what I mentioned earlier as well. Your predefined fields do not actually need to be on the layout. In this case, I will keep “Status” off the layout, because the process is to use “New” as the status for all new Leads. 

However, for Lead Sources, I will add to the layout because while it will probably be sales 99% of the time, it’s not guaranteed to always be Sales. This gives the user the ability to change it if needed.

After a quick refresh, our changes have taken effect and look good. The source is visible, defaulted to Sales, but still editable. The status defaults to New but is not on the layout, so it is not visible to the user.

Publisher Layout

The other half of Global Actions is the Publisher Layout. The publisher layout controls which of those actions your users have access to and can vary based on their profile.

If you’ve never made changes here before, you might only have the first one: Global Layout – this applies to everyone until you start adding other layouts and change the Publisher Layout Assignment. Click “Edit” next to Global Layout:

Since we’re working in Lightning and not classic, we’re going to use the “Mobile & Lighting Actions” in both the upper section and the lower section. You may need to click the gear icon in the lower section. 

This org does not use Chatter, so I’m removing those features. Click on any action and drag it to remove or rearrange the order. 

If you’re making a Layout for a sales team, you may want to move “New Opportunity” to the top. If you’re making a Layout for a support team, you may want to move “New Case” to the top and remove Opportunities and Leads entirely:

Notice in the Mobile and Lightning section that we only have New Case, New Contact, and options for the activities that support normally completes. All other options have been removed.

Publisher Layout Assignment

Finally, you can adjust who sees which Layout in the Publisher Layout Assignment:

Once that is completed, this example is the new view for the Support users. 

Additional Features

There are a couple of other things that you can customize in Global Actions. If you click “New” in the Global Action, you can create a custom action for another object. For example, if you have a “POC” object: 

1. Choose the appropriate object.
2. Select a Label. The Standard Label is the word “New” followed by the name of the object. However, you don’t have to use that. You can create a custom label as is shown here.
3. Add a description.
4. Decide if you want a feed item created.
5. Customize the success message for your users (if any).

Don’t forget to add this new Global Action to your Publisher Layout:

Final Thoughts

And that’s really all there is to it! There’s no code, nothing is hidden, and if you’re already familiar with working with page layouts, assignments, and field requirements, this will be a breeze for you. 

If you’ve never made changes to your Global Actions, there are certainly some improvements you can make to them in your org. 

Don’t forget to ask your users if they would like the ability to quickly create new records without navigating away from a page. Getting input from your users will ensure that you build precisely what they need and keep your org clean and in top shape for the future.