Here at makepositive we are extremely lucky to work on a huge variety of projects across multiple sectors. With this variety, it means our consultants are exposed to a wide plethora of Salesforce functionality across multiple Clouds.

For this week’s tip we look at In-App Guidance, Rich Text and Manual Sharing and Share Entries. Our Consultants came across an amazing new platform tool that allows everyone to use it.

In-App Guidance

(In-App Guidance: Following on from mentioning it in the Spring ’22 Release Overview)

Our colleague Tom Fray, an Implementation Consultant, highlighted some more benefits of the In-App Guidance feature. Here’s his top tip on how to use the feature: We can use it to add prompts and walkthroughs to share information, and to train or onboard users.

You can select the target audience, specify where it appears and for how long. This video is a great guide to getting started. Prompts are small windows that display news, training and onboarding messages.

Walkthroughs are hands-on interactive tours with step-by-step prompts. You can have up to three active walkthroughs at a time. To use more you need to purchase a permission set licence through the myTrailhead subscription. (Users can see prompts without purchasing extra licences).

Rich Text

Tom Phillis came across an amazing feature and he did a short video on how to use Rich Text.

What is Rich Text

The Rich Text Lightning component can be used as a simple yet effective way to make key information easy to find/stand out for users.

For example, you need to let a user know that a customer is of high priority amongst many other fields on a Lightning record page. Well, this is where Rich Text can be useful when used conditionally.

How do I use rich text in Salesforce Lightning

From a Lightning record page, hit the cog > edit page.
Simply drag and drop the Rich Text Component wherever you wish your message to appear.
Add your message and format your text.
Set your criteria for when you’d like the component to be visible.
Test that your criteria are correct.

Manual Sharing and Share Entries

Our colleague Sarah Neville, an Implementation Consultant, shared information about Manual Sharing and Share entries.

There are some scenarios where sharing rules cannot offer the level of flexibility required. This often occurs due to inconsistency in either how we identify the users who need access to a particular record or the record attributes that define when to extend this access. This is where manual sharing comes in. Manual sharing allows us to handle exception cases, granting access to a particular record for users who would not obtain it any other way.

Using the Sharing button, the owner of a record, a user above the owner in the role hierarchy, users granted ‘full access’ to the record, or a system admin, can choose to grant read only or read/write access to a record for a:

User
Customer Portal User
Partner User
Public Group
Role

However, it is also possible to manage shared entries dynamically using flows.

For every object which can be shared, there is an object in the background which holds the share entry. For standard objects, the object API name is objectnameShare (e.g. AccountShare) and for custom objects, the object API name is customObject__Share (e.g. Job_Role__Share).

This object holds the following information:

Record which is being shared
With whom the record is being shared (user or group ID only)
The access level being granted

With the use of flows you can create, update and delete share entries. For example, let’s say you have a User lookup on an Account and whichever User is added to the lookup field should gain access to that Account and various related child records. You can use a flow to create the share entry against the Account and loop through any related records, creating share entries against those too. The same can work for deleting shared entries if the User is removed or changed. See the screenshot for an example of a basic flow creating share entries in a scenario like this.

Note: avoid hardcoding User or Group IDs and obtain them through a GET if necessary

Another handy feature relating to sharing is the Sharing Hierarchy button. This shows a list of every user who has access that’s greater than the org-wide default and the reason they have access, so it is very easy to find out who has access to a record and why.

Example of Shared Entry flow

We hope these tips have helped you explore more functionality within Salesforce. Please feel free to share any of your own top tips in the comments as makepositive strives to build a stronger Salesforce community.

Stay tuned for more of the team’s top tips! If you would like to speak to one of makepositive’s Salesforce experts about how you can improve your Salesforce experience please reach out to us at [email protected] or complete the Contact Form below.

Author: Moipone Lorraine, Tom Phillis, Tom Fray and Sarah Neville

Quick Tips for improving your Salesforce Experience – Part 7

In-App Guidance

Rich Text

Manual Sharing and Share Entries