Salesforce Admin’s Guide to In-App Help Hacks

Having technically sound solutions isn’t enough – user experience, user training, and user adoption are key ingredients to the successful release of new Salesforce features. In this article, we’ll dive into one useful way to help users understand how to use new features correctly: in-app help.

In-app help is accessible in-system training, placed where and when the user needs to see it.

Effective in-app help can help to:

• Improve the user experience when changes are shipped to an existing org.
• Reduce the volume of questions sent from users to admins regarding new features. 
• Improve adoption and overall usership of applications.  
• Shrink the time required to train users on new features or applications.

To unpack in-app help, we’ll discuss seven Salesforce tools and custom solutions that admins can configure in their own orgs to support user adoption and training.

7 Ways to Configure In-App Help

1. In-App Guidance

In-App Guidance is a freemium Salesforce product that enables admins to configure standalone prompts or guided walkthroughs at specific locations and times, for specific users, within an application. In-app guidance provides a responsive and aesthetically pleasing way to inform your users of changes, required actions, or new processes. 

To learn more about in-app guidance, visit Andreea Doroftei’s useful article Salesforce In-App Guidance: Enhance Your User Experience. You can also view Salesforce’s brief tutorial video on how to get started with in-app guidance. 

In-app guidance might be the holy grail of in-app help in terms of control, precision, and user experience; however, robust in-app guidance can incur additional licensing charges and be fairly time-intensive to set up, though it could save your team significant time in user training.

For orgs that aren’t quite ready for in-app guidance, there are additional Salesforce features and solutions to help…

2. Guidance for Success Text in Path Components

Simple but effective, Path component guidance for success text is a great way to provide your users with in-app help when records need to progress through various stages.

Path component is a Salesforce standard feature that visualizes a stage field on a record page. When configuring a path component, admins can add “guidance for success text” underneath each stage to inform users of the actions that need to be taken before the record can be progressed to the next stage.

For businesses with complex processes, sales cycles, or approvals, guidance for success text within the Path component can be a quick win. For more information, learn how to Enable Path in 6 Easy Steps with Luzy Mazalon’s helpful how-to guide. 

3. Field Help Text

Perhaps the lowest hanging fruit with the greatest impact, field-level help text is quick and easy to set up and packs a punch in terms of consistent utility for users engaging with your applications. Help text on fields is defined in setup when configuring a field, and displays in the front-end when the user hovers over the “i” icon next to the field.

Include field help text as a standard practice whenever the purpose of the field isn’t immediately clear to the user. Knowing that useful help text will always be available increases users’ trust in Salesforce solutions.

4. Automation Error Messages

Helping users correctly use an app also means ensuring that users understand what went wrong when the system throws an error. Smooth error handling with informative error messages in Validation Rules and Flows constitutes an important part of the troubleshooting process, and when configured thoughtfully, can help to ensure that the user is engaging with the system correctly.

For Validation Rules, ensure that your error messages explain the cause of the error and how the user can solve it. Set the error message to display in an intuitive location (i.e. next to the field that caused the error). For Screen Flows, use fault paths with custom error messages to support the user experience surrounding exceptions. Learn more about Custom Error Components in Salesforce Flow by reading Andreea Doroftei’s article. 

5. In-System Help Text Components

We’ve covered in-app help for progressing records through various stages, for specific fields, and for automation issues – but what about generic in-app support? 

Rich Text components in Lightning Record Pages can be easily leveraged to add guidance to record pages. Adding a Help tab with instructions on how to execute certain tasks on the record can support users in understanding and adopting new interfaces. 

Rich text components on LRPs can be easily removed or displayed conditionally according to certain record or user criteria, once training and adoption phases are complete. 

6. URL Help Button

When text components are insufficient to capture all of the training required for users to adopt new functionality, buttons and links can be utilized to direct users to off-system documentation and training artefacts. A simple Help button can be configured via the Object Manager to direct users to a defined URL (i.e. a Confluence page or other document repository) to access further training materials.

7. App Home Page

Consider configuring a Home page for your application that contains components to educate your users on how to use a new app. Your home page might include:

• A text summary of the purpose of the app
• A video walkthrough of how to use the app
• URL links to additional support resources
• A related list to create support Cases to log issues and questions 
• Contact information for your admin

An informative app home page that contains all relevant training information can help to reduce the amount of time you spend directing users to the variety of support resources they may require to onboard onto using a new application.

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!

For even more ideas on in-app help, check out the Top 5 Salesforce Admin Tools for Creating Training Resources.