Lightning Experience Actions are a quick, no code way that we, as Salesforce Admins, can empower our users to use Salesforce and increase adoption. If your users have ever said “If only you could make it easier” then Lightning Experience Actions are a great way to drive adoption and user engagement.
Here’s how both Sales and Service teams can use Lightning Actions to get desired results with just one click!
In many sales cycles, reps will need support resources for demonstrations, proof of concepts, evaluations, statement of work, etc. As Admins, we can empower our sales reps to make a resource request with one click.
In our scenario, we have built a custom object for Resource Request and have a lookup from that object to the opportunity record. This allows us to create multiple Resource Request records for one opportunity.
From the Object Manager in Setup Menu in Lightning, find the Opportunity object and create a new Action. We want to create an action for a “Demo Resource Request”.
Once we have saved the Action, we can add the two fields on the action page layout, that are important for the sales rep to fill out – “Start Date” and “Description”. We want them to tell us the resource start date and give us an idea of what this demo is for, or what is it that they need the resource to do.
In the predefined Field Value section, we clicked on “New” and selected the field we want to pre-fill data. Since we are building this action for a “Demo Request”, we select “Demo” from the picklist for “Request Type” and clicked on Save. We can predefine multiple fields within one action as you will see in the service example.
The end date is calculated based on the type of the request. Typically an evaluation will require more time than a demo or statement of work. An email notification is sent to the Resource manager when a record is created. Both these are taken care of with a process built with Process Builder. Lastly, we added the Action to the Opportunity Page Layout.
The Sales rep clicks a Request Demo Resource icon, selects the start date and adds a description. Upon Save, the “End Date” is automatically calculated which is driven by the predefined “Request Type” field. The resource manager can assign the right resource to help the Sales rep. The sales rep has to click only one button in order to request a resource. We, as a Salesforce Admins, are empowering the sales reps to use Salesforce more efficiently.
Many companies count on revenue generated from existing customers as part of their business model. Since support & services teams are interacting with customers on a regular basis, why not make it easy for these teams to upsell and start the sales process?
The handoff from support to sales can be cumbersome and emails can easily be overlooked, which means potential revenue can be lost. As an Admin, you can build a Lightning Experience Action that creates a new opportunity right from the support case to prevent this from happening again!
From the Object Manager in Setup Menu in Lightning, find the case object and create a new Action. Be sure there is a lookup to Cases on your Opportunity object first.
After saving your new Action, select the fields you want on the Action Page Layout. In order to get adoption, best practice is to add four fields to the page layout. Take advantage of the predefined (pre-filled) functionality of Lightning Actions and keep it simple for the end users to add data.
Select the fields on the opportunity that you want to predefine. Fields like the stage, opportunity owner, and account name can all be pre-filled with values you select or formulas. Formulas allows you to not only update fields with values from related records, but also perform calculations for different fields in the opportunity record.
Now just add the Action to your case page layout in the Lightning Experience Actions section, and you are done! You can build an automated process that will notify sales when a new opportunity is created by a support agent. Support agents can create new opportunities without ever leaving their case and sales teams will have an opportunity in their pipeline that they’re guaranteed not to miss.
Lightning Actions can allow an admin to take complex data entry and simplify it for increased user adoption. We no longer have to hear how hard or complex it is to use Salesforce. Lightning Actions are accessible on the desktop and mobile. So, we build it once and the end users can use it no matter where they are or what device they are on. This is a win-win for everyone!
This article is co-authored by Deepa Patel, Sales Operations Manager, Basati and Jessica Boardman, Sr. Business Systems Manager, Scale Computing.
Trailhead Module: App Customization Lite: Understanding How Actions Work in Lightning Experience
Help Doc: Actions in Lightning Experience
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