Salesforce has many great standard features that don’t cost extra money to implement and are highly beneficial to users. Many people don’t even think to customize those standard features because they assume they’re unchangeable or simply don’t know how.
One of the most commonly ignored standard features is Apps. An app in Salesforce is a UI designation that controls the look and usability within that app. App settings can control the page views, tabs, home page, and even have their own theme. Having a custom app for a dedicated team makes their work process faster and more efficient, and it will greatly reduce the amount of frustration your users experience on a daily basis.
What Is an App?
We’ve talked about the technical definition of an app, but what are we actually looking for in Salesforce?
The image below shows how to navigate the different apps that are available to you. You may have heard this called the “waffle” or the “domino”; however, the official name is the App Launcher. This is where all users will navigate to change their app.
You may notice that directly next to the App Launcher, we see the word “Sales”, which tells me that I am currently in the Sales App. Notice the tabs that are available, their order, and the Home Page view. The first tab is “Opportunities” (which makes sense in the Sales App), and my Home tab is showing some widgets that are relevant specifically for sales.
Now, if we go back to the App Launcher and click, we’ll see there are many other apps to choose from:
If we switch to the Customer Service App, we’ll see a totally different view, but still within the exact same Salesforce org:
This view also has the Home tab, but it has been tailored for the customer service team. We also have the tabs that our customer service team needs immediately accessible.
Creating a Custom App
Before creating a custom app, you’ll need to do a little research to figure out what the end user needs. In this example, we’re going to create a custom app for our product managers. They mostly look at opportunities, price books, products, reports, and dashboards. They also have a team dashboard that they use already, as well as a team logo. Once we’ve figured out what the team needs, we can move on to the next step.
Creating a custom app is easy, and Salesforce walks you through the steps one at a time. Just navigate to Setup, then App Manager, followed by New Lightning App.
First, you’ll need to set the app name. You can also set a custom description, logo, and default color.
Page two is all about setup and navigation. You can modify these as needed, but if you just want a standard app, there’s no need to make changes – you can just click “Next”
The third page is the Utility Items, which will always be available in the bottom left corner. These are optional, but it’s always a good idea to have at least “Recent Items”.
The fourth page is where you will set up your tabs, and the order they appear in. For this team, we’re going to add home, price books, products, opportunities, reports, and dashboards.
On the final page, you will select which profiles have access to this app.
Click “Save & Finish”. As long as your profile is one of the selected profiles above, you will be able to see this app by navigating to the App Launcher.
The final step is to customize the Home tab with the dashboard that the product team is already using.
Navigate to Setup, then Lightning App Builder, and click “New”. Select “Home Page”, enter the label of this home page, and click “Next”.
On the following screens, you will choose a template and be directed to the Builder screen, where you can use the drag-and-drop interface to add the dashboard or any other components you might need.
After designing your page, you will need to assign this page as the App Default for the new app you just created.
Once you have saved, activated, and assigned the Home page to an app, you can exit the App Builder and navigate to the app you just created.
Additional Customizations for Apps
You may have noticed in the App Launcher screenshot earlier that there’s a long list of apps, but you don’t see our two examples: Customer Service and Product Management.
There are many standard, out-of-the-box apps here that your users probably don’t need to see. Navigate to each profile and remove the apps those people don’t need.
You can also change the overall order of all of the apps that exist by going to Setup and then navigating to App Menu. Use the three horizontal lines next to each app to drag, drop, and rearrange the order of all apps.
Finally, in the App Launcher, make sure your users know how to toggle between apps, click “View All”, and rearrange their own view by dragging and dropping the order of the apps they personally have access to.
In the screenshot above, you’ll notice the full list of objects that the user has access to. Make sure they know that even if there is no tab, they can still access other objects by navigating here as well.
Summary
Customizing your apps and app menu is a foolproof way to improve the user experience for everyone in your org. While it might seem like this is not a very challenging task, it is something that will have a huge impact on your users – especially if you have an older org. For companies with a brand new org, this is a feature you can implement very quickly and show good ROI for your Salesforce investment.
I hope this article helped understand what apps are in Salesforce and how to customize them to meet the needs of your team. Please let me know what your favorite app customizations are in the comments section below!