Three Lightning Experience Features to Help Your Users Fine Tune Their Productivity

You’re an Admin, the champion of your users. You understand their workflows and what they need to conquer with their daily tasks. You customize Salesforce to help make everyone from a service agent to a sales manager as efficient and productive as possible. But, as you well know,  we’re all a little different. We all have a unique set of things we need to access and keep track of. And the stuff we use most frequently can change day to day and week to week.

That’s why we’ve made it easy for your users to tailor how they navigate and search from anywhere in Lightning Experience. Let’s take a look at how focused searches, navigation bar personalization, and favorites minimize clicks and get their work done with gusto. And we’ll give you some key takeaways to share with your users. After all, simple reminders in the form of Chatter posts, emails, or even trainings can have a big impact.

Cut the Clutter with More Focused Searches

When we search, we often know whether we’re looking for a contact, an account, or a Chatter post. So why waste time and clicks searching other types of records? That’s why we’ve made it easier for your users to search by object type from anywhere in Lightning Experience.

Searching by object type isn’t new, but we made it easier to fine tune searches by adding controls next to where you enter search terms. Type and select, or just select the object you want to search for in the dropdown and then start searching. Search works as usual if you don’t select an object.

When demoing this to your users a few key takeaways to share with them about focused search:

• Know what type of object you’re searching for? Select it next to where you use global search (new in Summer ‘18). When you make search specific, you get more relevant search results.
• There’s a lot of data out there. If you’re getting too many search results or no results for stuff you know exists, get more specific with your search terms, avoid partial terms (like Ac for Acme), and try limiting your search to a specific object.   

Learn more about search. 

The Fine Mahogany of Your Very Own Navigation Bar

One size doesn’t always fit all. That’s why we’ve made it easy for your users to personalize an app’s navigation bar in Lighting Experience. The power of personalization makes you and your users true partners in productivity, because even the smallest adjustments can mean a lot less clicking over time. Let’s take a peek.

Use the pencil icon to add items, like that report you always start your day with, to the navigation bar. And in case you haven’t heard, you can even choose from your favorites list when adding new items to the navigation bar.

Are your users not using certain items in the navigation bar? Maybe they want to move an important report to the front of the line? It’s easy to arrange the navigation bar to match how you work. Just drag and drop.

When demoing this to your users a few key takeaways to share with them about personalizing the navigation bar:

• Make the navigation bar your own by adding what’s important to you. Click the pencil icon on the navigation bar to get started. You can add favorites to the navigation bar, or choose from a list of all available items (new in Summer ‘18).
• In Lightning Experience, you can add granular items to the navigation bar, like an important dashboard, or a favorite list view. In Salesforce Classic, you can add only object types, like Accounts, to the navigation bar.
• It’s easy to rearrange the order of items in the navigation bar to suit the unique way you work. Just drag and drop directly in the navigation bar (new in Summer ‘18).
• You can change the order of any items in the navigation bar. You can also add and rename or remove stuff you’ve added, like a favorite list view. Keep in mind that each app has a set of default items in the navigation bar that can’t be renamed or removed.

Admins have lots of options and settings to control how users personalize their navigation bar. Learn more about navigation bar personalization considerations.

Fast Navigation with Favorites

Do your users know about favorites? Favorites make accessing frequently used pages a cinch. They’re a bit like web browser bookmarks, but they’re available no matter which app you’re using, or which browser, computer, or mobile device you use to log into Lighting Experience.

Just click the favorites star to add the current page, like opportunities closing this month, to your favorites list.

When demoing this to your users, a few key takeaways to share with them about favorites:

• Favorites are your own private list. They’re easy to create and manage, and you can access them from any app in Lighting Experience and from any browser, computer, or mobile device.
• You can choose from your favorites list when adding new tabs to an app’s navigation bar (new in Summer ‘18). It’s an awesome way to put a favorite right at your fingertips in the fine mahogany of your very own navigation bar.
• You can name favorites so they’re memorable to you. Go ahead, change the name of that important case from “0012456” to something more meaningful. “Maria’s Platinum Case” makes her family.
• You can create up to 200 favorites and rearrange your favorites list so it’s tailored to the way you work. And don’t worry if you create lots of favorites—you can search for favorites at the top of the favorites list to find what you need fast.

Learn more about favorites.

What Lightning Experience productivity tips do you have for increasing your users’ productivity? Share them with us in the comments, or on Twitter with hashtag #AwesomeAdmin.