How To Create a Salesforce Lightning App with App Builder: Step-by-Step Guide

What are Lightning apps? How can these benefit the organizations? You are on the right page if you are seeking answers to these questions.

Salesforce Lightning apps facilitate organizations in building custom apps that suit their needs. You can customize it per your requirements and make your business operations smooth.

This post will reveal information about Lightning apps, the benefits of creating Lightning apps in Salesforce, steps to build one for your company, and more.

Let’s dive in!

What is Lightning App in Salesforce?

In an organization, the employees work in groups and teams with the same data. They need to use a single app to access the entire organization’s data, which is obviously not time-efficient.

Here, Salesforce Lightning apps come into play where the team can have specially appointed apps to conduct business operations with the details necessary to them. And, as every app resides within the same Salesforce org, all the data is shared in one unified hub.

Your org can perform more efficiently with apps (lightning apps) in the Lightning experience by smoothly switching between apps (To switch between applications, you can use the App Launcher), which eases the switch of contexts while users hold access to the objects, items, and pages essential for them.

Lightning apps hold everything you expect from a custom app, like custom and standard objects and custom tabs.

Besides, these apps can also incorporate Lightning page tabs and utilities, such as Lightning Voice. You can append navigation items to the apps you get from AppExchange and install them from a managed package.

Also, you can upgrade custom apps from Salesforce Classic that automatically work in Salesforce Lightning Experience. You can find Classic apps alongside your Lightning apps, which appear in the list of apps in Setup, and you can also get them from the App Launcher (if Show in Lightning Experience attribute = enable).

But, an aspect to notice here is you can’t reverse the same action in the case of Lightning apps, as these are not available in Salesforce Classic.

Benefits to Create Lightning App with App Builder In Salesforce

Choose Salesforce Lightning App Builder to build Lightning apps, which permits customizing Salesforce to fulfill specific business needs. Developing custom pages and apps can make your user experience more productive and efficient.

Let’s dig deeper to learn more about the benefits of using this tool.

1. Improved User Experience

This tool helps tailor custom pages and apps to specific users’ needs, enabling them to find and use the needed details.

2. Improved Productivity

Building custom pages and apps becomes seamless with Salesforce Lightning App Builder, which provides your users with the tools and information they need to conduct their jobs more efficiently.

3. Increased Flexibility

This tool offers the flexibility of customizing Salesforce per your business requirements

Additionally,

A point-and-click tool, Salesforce Lightning App Builder facilitates the creation of custom pages for the Salesforce mobile app and Lightning Experience.

A One-stop shop for configuring Lightning apps is the Lightning App Builder.

To access the Lightning App Builder:

• Enter Lightning App Builder from Setup in the Quick Find box,
• Then select Lightning App Builder.

Besides, with this tool, you can build various types of pages, such as:

1. Custom Home Pages – Useful for sales reps, including every information one needs to close deals.

2. Custom Record pages – A customer service rep finds them valuable for varied cases, including specific and relevant customer details.

3. Custom Dashboard-Style Pages – A manager uses them to track KPIs (key performance indicators) like customer satisfaction and sales revenue.

4. Custom “Point” Apps – These are best for a company’s employees and help them submit expense reports.

5. Single-Page Apps – A company’s Sales reps use them to view and update every lead and opportunity in a unified place.

Step-By-Step Guide To Create A Lightning App With App Builder in Salesforce

Besides creating various pages using the Lightning App Builder, you can update your app’s navigation, options, and branding and manage the Lightning pages allocated to the app.

Note: The Lightning App Builder supports the browsers the same as Light Experience, not the mobile ones.

Let’s check the pages one can create using this tool.

App Home Page

Create an app’s home page that you can directly append to Lightning and the Salesforce mobile apps. Next, users can easily access that app’s essential items and objects.

Steps to Follow to Create App Home Page Using Lightning App Builder

Step 1: From Setup, enter App Builder in the Quick Find box, then choose Lightning App Builder.

Step 2: Click New.

Step 3: Select App Page and then click Next.

Step 4: Give a label to your app page, then click Next. (The label needs to be of 80 characters.)

Step 5: Choose a page template and click Done.

Step 6: Drag every component you want onto the page.

Step 7: Click every component on the page to configure its properties.

Step 8: Click in the free or empty section of the canvas or on the Page link in the breadcrumb to configure the page properties.

Step 9: Optional, You can add global actions to your page-

• In the page properties, click Select,
• Add, reorder, or remove the actions for your page.
• Click OK.

Step 10: When you are done with editing the page, click Save.

Note: Active the page to give your users access to it.

Mobile App Page

You can create this page for your Salesforce mobile app that users can see first on logging in.

The below steps target building an app page for the mobile app only.

Step 1: From Setup, enter App Builder in the Quick Find box, then choose Lightning App Builder.

Step 2: Click New.

Step 3: Select App Page and then click Next.

Step 4: Give a label to your app page, then click Next. (The label needs to be of 80 characters.)

Step 5: Choose a page template and click Done.

(For your mobile-only page, you can choose any template. But, if you plan to share this page between desktop and mobile users, choose a template that’s apt for desktop use. On mobile devices, the page collapses responsively into a single column).

Step 6: Ensure you view the template preview using the Phone form factor. On the template, the regions are showcased in a one-column layout.

Step 7: Drag the components you want onto the page. (Screen space and bandwidth are important on mobile, so limit every page to only 4 or 5 components. Overloading the page with various features can slow the performance and be harder to use).

Step 8: Click every component on the page to configure its properties.

Step 9: Click in the free or empty section of the canvas or on the Page link in the breadcrumb to configure the page properties.

Step 10: Optional, You can add global actions to your page-

• In the page properties, click Select,
• Add, reorder, or remove the actions for your page.
• Click OK.

Step 11: When you are done with editing the page, click Save.

Note: Active the page to give your users access to it.

You can restrict the page to mobile users during the page activation process. After activation, append this to any Lightning App in the App Manager to allow your users to personalize.

Record Page

Using the Lightning App Builder, you can add, remove, or reorder components on a record page to offer users a customized view of every object’s records.

Step 1: Choose any of the ways below to create a Lightning Experience record page.

• Select Edit from the Setup menu on a record page. When you choose Edit Page for the first time, Salesforce creates a copy of the standard page. You can edit this copy in the Lightning App Builder.
• In Setup, from the Lightning App Builder, create a page. In the Quick Find box, enter App Builder, choose Lightning App Builder, click New, and go through the page creation wizard.
• In Setup, clone an existing custom Lightning page from the Lightning page list or its detail page.
• From the Page list in the Lighting App Builder, click New Page.

Step 2: In the Lightning App Builder, edit, add, or remove components to modify the page’s layout. Reorder the components by dragging them.

Step 3: Create a descriptive and unique label for your customized page in the page properties.

Step 4: At the top of the properties pane, click Page from the breadcrumb to get the page properties. How Does Emizentech Help You?Save your page.

Note: Active the page to give your users access to it.

How Does Emizentech Help You?

A Lightning App would be a great help for your organization to keep everything separate and well-organized.

Creating a lightning app in Salesforce for your business can be daunting. But you can connect with a Salesforce consulting company, like us, to get your job done seamlessly.

Our Salesforce consultant holds the expertise to guide the right path to clients and help them meet their business objectives seamlessly.

Wrapping Up!

Developing a lightning app for your business can boost productivity and enhance the user experience. We have included steps to create Lightning apps; you can follow them to build one. Still, if you need any help, connect with expert Salesforce developers.

So, hire a Salesforce development company today and get the apt assistance for your next Salesforce project.

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