The Secret to Building Dynamic Portals With Real-Time Salesforce Sync 

Whether it is customer portals, internal websites, embedded components, or even complex surveys, supercharge your business process with an all-in-one, fully customizable platform. 

Highlights 

• Build fully customizable internal or external portals with drag-and-drop tools. 
• Seamlessly retrieve, display, create, or update Salesforce records through a real-time integration.
• Leverage a suite of input and display components, for which you can control every detail.
• Enjoy granular security controls through authentication, role, and page-by-page access. 
• Make use of comprehensive logs and email notifications to review activity and troubleshoot integrations. 

Having bespoke and interactive websites is the norm nowadays, with customers, partners, and internal users expecting to find the information they need fast and complete all their tasks in one place. Whether it’s learning platforms, customer communities, or industry-specific web portals, successfully deploying fully customized pages with enhanced security and accessibility control can be quite the feat – even before considering potential integrations, such as Salesforce. 

Titan is a comprehensive platform comprising multiple tools, which can be used both independently and as a combination to supercharge your experience as an administrator or a user. Titan Web is the product that can take your site-building experience to the next level by enabling editors to create fully fledged web applications only using point-and-click tools. 

Through the use of readily available components that can be added to the page, customized as needed, and individually integrated with Salesforce, Titan empowers their customers to go beyond Salesforce’s capabilities without the need for pricey custom development and the time associated with it. Titan Web can either fully replace the need to use Salesforce Experience Cloud or be used to extend Salesforce’s out-of-the-box functionality without the need to engage a Salesforce or web developer. 

This in-depth review will showcase the main features Titan Web has to offer, ideal use cases, and setup effort, as well as how fast your users can (and will) get used to this new experience. 

Features

As mentioned above, this article will be fully focused on Titan Web, but it’s worth taking a look at all the other products too. Pairing it up with tools such as document generation or eSignature can help you achieve a comprehensive and fully customized end-to-end flow for any process.

We all know that portals require setup and 2FA, but let’s fast forward to the good stuff first – at the end of the article, we’ll also go through the initial steps of creating a project and adding the associated components. 

Seamless Salesforce Integration

If you’ve ever bumped into Experience Cloud limitations, you’re certainly in for a treat! For every individual component, you can configure the Salesforce integration to pull or push data directly within the CRM through the connected Salesforce user. You can retrieve any standard or custom object, make updates, and even filter picklist values based on the user roles. 

When it comes to the out-of-the-box Experience Cloud sites created directly within Salesforce, you do not need to worry about how Salesforce data is displayed or controlled within the portal, as there are mechanisms that you may already be familiar with. But what about with a Titan Web portal? Just how much flexibility can you have? 

In short, a whole lot, and more! In this example, I created a simple product catalog. Within this page, two separate Salesforce integrations retrieve Product data, one for a strip column and the other for a table. 

Notice that when retrieving CRM information, you can also pull a parent record, as well as information from a related record – in this example, Product and the Price Book Entry – in order to retrieve the list price. 

For each object you retrieve data for, you will have to choose whether you either pull it directly and set criteria, or from an existing report or Apex, and map the fields coming from Salesforce to the components on your page. 

There are also a few settings to choose from, including additional criteria for when the integration should run or sorting the records.

Actions

Component interactivity cannot be forgotten, especially when it comes to a functional portal integrated with Salesforce. You might have noticed a button on the screenshots above – the button should provide more information about the product it is clicked for, so let’s make that happen with on-click actions!

Configuring on-click actions results in the actions flow screen popping up on the page for you to select the relevant nodes representing the actions that should be performed. In this example, I chose to send a Task to Salesforce, then display a modal to the user with more information. While this was just a test use case, in less than two minutes, I had a working Salesforce action triggered with a click of a button. 

Note that when creating the integration, you will have to choose the type of action, the object, and when the action will be triggered, and map the fields that should be sent to Salesforce with either static or dynamic values using variables or fields from the page. Afterwards, it’s all about enjoying the real-time data sync between your components and Salesforce! 

With the Product information being retrieved and the on-click action for the button in place, it’s time to preview the page, just like you would after editing a digital experience in the Salesforce Experience Cloud. 

Notice how even if we added just one column and one set of fields, as I chose for it to be repeated, Titan Web has made it appear as many times as there were Products in Salesforce that met the criteria. Also, as expected, when clicking the Explore button, the Product Details modal came up on the page. 

On the Salesforce side, the Task was also created and is waiting to be actioned! While this was just a very simple example, the possibilities are truly endless. In this use case, the Explore button could easily become a Buy Now one, creating a Lead or an Opportunity in Salesforce with the Product already added and sending a notification to the Account Owner. 

Regardless of what actions you choose and which objects are involved, you can build the process exactly as you wish. You can see more examples of how Titan Web can be used to enhance the experience across various processes and industries within the Use Cases section later on in the article. 

Embed Your Titan Web Project in Salesforce

As an all-in-one alternative for Experience Cloud, Titan Web can be integrated with Salesforce and used on its own; however, through a Lightning web component, it can also pair up with your existing Experience Cloud implementation to provide users with even more functionality. 

The component can be embedded within digital experience pages, or you could opt to use it internally for your team, directly on Lightning Pages, with automatic record Id mapping if you choose to use it on Record Pages, alongside the shared connected user session. 

The functionality that you build in Titan Web will be maintained, regardless of where you choose to expose it. For the example below, I chose to expose the list of products with a different styling directly on a digital experience to allow users to start the buying process directly. You can find out everything about configuring the Lightning web component in Titan for use in Salesforce here. 

As soon as the site is published, you will receive a URL for the Lightning web component, and if you choose for it to be available this way, the site will not be accessible outside of the component for added security. 

An Experience for Every Device

With technology allowing us to work from anywhere and on any device, the digital experiences we create nowadays should also be suitable for any screen size. Titan Web allows you to easily adapt all pages you create to a comprehensive list of devices, including Desktop, Laptop, Tablet, and Phone. 

For example, you can create a fully responsive design with drawer navigation for mobile devices and adapt your components to behave as intended regardless of whether the user is at their desk or on the go. 

Creating Your Web Project

As promised, now that you have seen what could be achieved within a Titan Web portal, let’s cover the basics as well. 

Creating a site in Titan translates into a new project. Sandbox environments are available and can connect to Salesforce sandboxes for an integrated building and testing experience. After choosing a theme and naming your Web Project, you can start making it your own. The Homepage is the first one created, and you have the option to create more pages and folders as needed. 

User Authentication

Security and access are top-of-mind items for Titan Web, with multiple options to choose from to ensure that your web application and sensitive information are properly guarded behind an authentication mechanism. While some pages may be public, pages containing personal information, sensitive data, or customer-related details should only be available to certain users.

There are multiple authentication options available, such as email-based two-factor authentication with OTP, SSO integration capabilities, and token-based authentication. There is also the option to enforce IP restrictions as needed. Also, when it comes to OTP, the default option is email, but it can easily be customized to be sent via SMS from Salesforce. 

Two-factor authentication can be configured based on any Salesforce object – as long as there is a unique field available, be it email or another type – through SmartV. This way, the authentication process can be both seamless and secure, as well as quick to set up. 

There are more options within SmartV that you may want to explore, but essentially, once the login, conditions, and authentication are done, it’s ready to use! In my example, the email address, First Name, and Last Name will be required before the code is sent out. 

Menu and Page Management

When creating a new page, you can start from scratch, reuse one from the same project or other projects, or opt for a template. From a security and audience tailoring perspective, built-in guest and fallback user roles are included, but custom roles can be created with granular permissions at multiple levels: project, header, component, and even field level. 

The pages themselves can be configured as public or to require authentication through the inheritance settings, and can be easily organized in folders to create a seamless navigation. 

Within the project’s settings, you can add and customize even more elements, including favicons, how the loading page looks, as well as tailoring error pages. Titan Web also accounts for the addition of accessibility features and supports this effort with a direct integration with Userway to speed up the implementation. 

Menu management allows control of page visibility and navigation structure, as well as additional options to choose from, such as adding a logo, amending the title, or creating on-click actions for each of the navigation items if needed. We will cover what these actions can achieve later in the article.

Components

A blank page may seem scary at first, but it allows endless possibilities! You can make the project your own with dozens of readily available components. Similar to how Salesforce has sections, in Titan Web, the initial container is the Strip component, where you can add any type of component you need or use by itself with text, tabs, etc.

On top of the fact that there is a wide selection to choose from, each component has its own settings. Here, you can control everything from its behavior to Salesforce integrations and even animations, so if you would like a button to pop up on or fade into the screen, you can do so in just a few clicks. 

Access control can be defined for each field, but component visibility and interactivity can also be controlled based on criteria – just like you would for your internal users in Salesforce on a Record Page, but with many more possibilities. 

The rules can be created in a flow-like experience with easy-to-follow nodes that support even the most complex desired behavior, and criteria can be anything from device to field values. Also, if you don’t need to hide a component for good, you could simply disable it if certain criteria are met.

Component Styling and Customization

On top of the plethora of available components to choose from, Titan Web supports custom themes with font and color configurations. Not only that, but you can control every aspect of the individual components with component-level styling available for fine-grained control. 

You can easily select the font and colors, add a border, or control the shadowing with very specific values. Additionally, you can leverage custom CSS as well if needed (although you most likely won’t). 

Logs and Troubleshooting

No comprehensive platform is complete without considering error handling capabilities, and that is something that Titan Web excels at. It may seem daunting to administer a large number of projects, components, and Salesforce integrations, but it doesn’t have to be! You will have full visibility into what is occurring, whether it is a success or an issue. 

If any integration errors happen in your sandbox or production instance, you will be notified via email. The notification itself will contain both the error and the project it happened on, as well as the component that has been impacted. You can also reach the Titan logs either by simply clicking on the URL provided in the email, or you can see all the logs in the Settings tab within your Titan Account if you would like to proactively review the successes and failures. 

Use Cases

After seeing the above functionality and the endless possibilities, it is clear that Titan Web can support any use case for a web portal without having to involve a developer of any kind. Let’s go through a few of them below.

Internal Sales Portals

Similar to how the above portals work for external users, why not delight your own team with a new experience? Titan is not aiming to replace Salesforce but to work in tandem with your CRM, all while enhancing the user experience and tailoring to your team’s way of working. 

For example, this Sales Reporting Portal allows users access to their most important records, which they can review, action, and look at analytics for all on one page instead of juggling multiple tabs searching for the right list view or the right Report or Dashboard to check. Plus, this page can also be embedded in Salesforce.

Customer Support Portals

Titan Web can adapt just as easily for Support use cases as it does for Sales – once again, working in tandem with your Salesforce instance, through the real-time integration.

The below service portal experience allows customers or even internal colleagues to seamlessly open new cases, edit existing ones, attach files as needed, and continue the conversation within the case comments, all while the data is stored and updated within your CRM.

Industry Specific

Insurance is an industry that has a lot of customers, but any insurance claim process generally requires information, documents, and even payment. 

With Titan Web, you can build a portal that easily supports end-to-end insurance quote processes – from seamless customer registration and authentication to intuitive and accessible information collection forms, document generation for quotes, and document upload for claims. 

Plus, you can directly integrate payment through Stripe. 

Another example is a student portal with dynamic Salesforce data integration, which can cater to the needs of all Salesforce Education Cloud customers. When attending a university nowadays, students expect their experience to be as digitized as possible, including streamlined ways to update their information, enroll for courses, and update their personal information.   

Titan Web offers customers the possibility to easily create a branded experience for higher education, including a student profile with editable personal information, course and grade display, and even a multi-step application process. In the background, all the information can be synced back to Salesforce to be actioned and reported on. 

Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud Administrators can also enhance their donors’ experience and offer them an intuitive and user-friendly way to register for events, review their activity, and submit their donations without any hassle. 

Setup

Getting started with Titan is a breeze, with the setup time depending on what your specific requirements are. On top of your license being activated and logging into the Titan portal, if you would like to make use of the Lightning web component alongside more features, the only additional step is to install the Salesforce managed package from AppExchange. 

Following this, it’s all about connecting your Salesforce environments to Titan and creating additional users as needed. Note that when creating users, you can choose to do so based on their Salesforce Profile or assigned Permission Sets – no need for manual work. 

On the main Dashboard, you will be able to quickly manage everything about your projects as well as API consumption, users, and even integration errors (if any). 

Support

Because you can create exactly what you need and have so much functionality to choose from, you may think it will take a significant amount of time to get familiar with Titan Web – but that is definitely not the case. 

The platform itself is user-friendly, but the Titan team has invested significant effort into resources in all types of formats: written articles and videos, not to mention the numerous insightful LinkedIn posts and customer success stories, too.

But the one-stop shop for all your initial questions should be Titan Academy, where you can enroll in courses, track progress, and easily learn about all of their products, including Titan Web. If you prefer product documentation and release notes, Titan has you covered as well. 

Regardless of how you like to receive information, you will be able to find what you need – and fast.

If the extensive documentation doesn’t answer a certain question or you would like to find out more about a particular functionality, feel free to contact the Titan team, and they will be more than happy to help. 

Pricing

Titan Web has two available plans, and the pricing varies based on your company’s usage of API calls as well as templates. You can take a look at the individual pricing plans on their website and contact Titan for a bespoke offer. Additionally, as Titan offers an entire suite of products that complement each other well, you may wish to look at a package.   

Summary

Regardless of your organization’s industry or the Salesforce clouds you are using, Titan Web could help elevate the overall experience for both your external and internal users. 

The projects you can create could easily be an all-inclusive Experience Cloud alternative with no need for custom code, or you could choose to expand your Experience Cloud implementation with the numerous components available out of the box. With the possibility to edit every detail, from the authentication and branding to actions triggered by the components and accessibility considerations, this product will be your new best friend for tailoring web applications. 

If you’re curious to try out Titan Web for your use case, you can start a free trial today or book a demo with the Titan team to discuss any particularities of your implementation while seeing the platform in action.