Learn MOAR: Try Dynamic Actions in App Builder with the Summer ’20 Release

Discover Summer ’20 Release features! We are sharing five release highlights for admins and developers, curated and published by our evangelists as part of Learn MOAR. Complete the trailmix by July 31, 2020, to get a special community badge and unlock a $10 contribution to Bibliothèques Sans Frontières (Libraries Without Borders).

Admins, we know one of the ways you deliver success is by building custom experiences for your users. So we’ve been hard at work enhancing the Lightning App Builder to unlock capabilities for you to create more flexible and dynamic pages, without writing code.

With the Summer ’20 release, we’re excited to introduce you to Dynamic Actions! Now you can configure and add visibility rules for actions on your record pages, directly from within the Lightning App Builder. The more actions on your page layout, the more unmanageable the long list of actions becomes for both admins and their users alike. Until now.

We heard your feedback on point-and-click customization of actions from within the Lightning App Builder, as well as on the ability to conditionally assign certain actions to specific users, or to display based on different visibility criteria.

With Dynamic Actions, this is now possible! Here are ways you and your users can benefit:

• An instant upgrade for actions configuration: Add, reorder, and remove actions directly from within the Lightning App Builder, with a modern UI and live preview.
• Dynamic pages: Use visibility rules to show and hide actions to ensure users see only what is important to each of them, at a given time.
• Simpler layout management:
  • Manage the actions on your pages in the Lightning App Builder without touching the page layout editor.
  • Reduce the number of page layouts you need with action visibility rules.
  • Take advantage of a single assignment model for the Lightning page instead of the dual model of assigning a Lightning page and a page layout.

Dynamic Actions is part of a suite of low-code features we are excited to bring to our platform, which also includes Dynamic Forms. Both of these features are available for production orgs in Summer ’20!

When can I get my hands on Dynamic Actions/Dynamic Forms?

As soon as Salesforce’s Summer ’20 release hits your org! Check out the sandbox update blog post here.

For earlier access, sign up for a pre-release org here.

How does it work?

Dynamic Actions works for the actions in the highlights panel component on custom objects, only on desktop for now (see more about mobile below). Highlights panel is where most of your record page actions on desktop show up today. Support for standard objects and actions in other components, such as related lists, activities, and chatter, is on the roadmap for GA.

Dynamic Actions brings point-and-click customization for actions into the Lightning App Builder. When you click on a highlights panel component, you will see a new setting in the properties pane.

Check the box for Enable Dynamic Actions (Beta, desktop only) to start using Dynamic Actions.

You may notice the actions being previewed in the highlights panel component will disappear when you first click this box. This is because the actions metadata is now being driven by the actions you have defined in the highlights panel, which you are going to add next. (Note: You no longer need to go to the page layout to edit the highlights panel actions for this page. However, you will still need to use the page layout to edit your related lists, activities, and chatter actions for now, if you use those components.)

Click Add Action to add actions to your highlights panel. You will then see these actions reflected in the preview.

Click any action and click Add Filter to assign visibility rules for the action. You could add a rule that only displays the action if a user has a specific profile, or if the record data meets a specific criteria, as shown in the screenshot.

Configure the filter to customize how and when the action will appear.

TIP: Dynamic Actions and Dynamic Forms are great for reducing the amount of information presented to your users at a given time. With strategic use of visibility rules, you will be able to create dynamic experiences that highlight the important fields and actions users need at a given point in time, streamlining workflows and productivity.

TIP: Dynamic Actions are great for reducing the number of Lightning pages you need to manage based on slightly different needs for different users. However, if you find yourself in a situation where a page has more differences than similarities, consider using separate Lightning pages over visibility rules for easier maintenance.

Note: It is part of our GA plan to have a migration wizard with an option to migrate your actions metadata from your existing page layouts to further streamline the process.

What about mobile?

The actions you configure in the highlights panel component apply to desktop only in Summer ’20. Your mobile users will continue to see the actions that are defined in the assigned page layout when on a mobile record homepage. These actions will continue to appear in the mobile app action bar. It is on our roadmap to bring Dynamic Actions to mobile shortly.

Resources

• Lightning App Builder Trailhead module
• Dynamic Forms and Actions Trailblazer Community Group (ask questions and provide feedback)
• Dynamic Actions Summer ’20 release notes
• Dynamic Forms Summer ’20 release notes

Dynamic Actions is a Beta for Summer ’20. Want to give it a spin? Get a Pre-Release org or wait for Summer ’20 to arrive in your org, so you can enable Dynamic Actions yourself in the Lightning App Builder. We can’t wait to hear your feedback.