Bring Consistency & Speed to Diagrams with Salesforce + Lucidchart

As part of TrailheaDX, we’re thrilled to announce a new partnership between Salesforce and Lucidchart. With this partnership, we’re combining the power of our new Salesforce diagramming framework with Lucidchart shape libraries!

Lucidchart is the intelligent diagramming application that empowers teams to clarify complexity, align insights, and build the future — faster. Lucidchart offers shape libraries that standardize best practices, save time during development and illustrate key connections and relationships. We’re excited to begin work on a new Salesforce shape library to design and visualize your Salesforce architecture in Lucidchart.

The Salesforce shape library in Lucidchart will not only bring consistency and speed to the process of creating Salesforce diagrams, but it will also help you better align your teams and partners around design principles and consistent implementation standards.

We took some time to talk with Zayne Turner (Salesforce Architect Relations) and Laura Luttmer (lead product manager for Lucidchart) about this partnership and what it means for Lucidchart and Salesforce ecosystems.

Q. What makes diagrams and the way teams build diagrams so important?

Zayne: Visual communication is so essential, especially for complex ideas. Diagrams are like the CLI (command line interface) for architects and other team members — they give everyone a common way to approach the work to be done and understand the goals, decisions and aims of a project. Good diagrams aren’t just a tool for technical teams (though they matter a lot). They are also important tools for business stakeholders and executive sponsors to be empowered in their decision making and to stay connected to the key details of projects. It’s a way to ‘make the case’ to various kinds of stakeholders — and document what the team is doing & leaving behind in the technical and business landscape.

Laura: A common, visual language accelerates collaboration and improves communication. It’s easier to align and stay aligned when everyone is literally on the same page. Lucidchart makes it easy to involve the right people to make the right decisions. Diagramming allows you to layer information and clearly model current and future states, making it easier to iterate and get to the ideal state faster.

Q. What can Lucidchart users & Salesforce architects look forward to?

Laura: We’re adding new Salesforce shapes in the Lucidchart shape library so you can customize your Salesforce diagrams, plus we’ll have prebuilt templates that help standardize best practices. The goal is to ensure continuity and speed for our users while giving them the solutions they need to uphold or create implementation standards.

Zayne: Everything Laura said, plus the boost this will give to the whole ecosystem AND to Salesforce internally. The Lucidchart shape library, new templates, all of this goodness is built on the foundation of our new Salesforce diagraming framework and the unified look and feel we’ve created for diagrams. So on a very basic level, this consistent and shared language will allow teams across Salesforce — Sales, Customer Success, as well as our own Product and Marketing teams — to build new resources, establish truly shared best practices and work together in ways we haven’t really done before. And then making this shared language available to anyone working in Lucidchart means partners, customers, all kinds of teams across the whole ecosystem can also join in and work better together.

Q. What’s next?

Laura: We’re very excited about what this partnership unlocks for our users and Salesforce architects. Giving them the power to customize and standardize their Salesforce diagrams is just the tip of the spear. We want to set our users up for success, and introducing new Salesforce shapes to our library is laying the groundwork for what is to come. In the future, we hope to have robust resources, including new templates, how-tos and articles on best practices, and additional resources that would be helpful for users. I’m also really excited to think about how we can look at the power of tools like Trailhead to help users build more skills in visual communication and organizational structure.

Zayne: This is just the beginning of a really exciting collaboration. Right now, we’re really focused on the shape library experience, internal adoption of the new diagramming standards at Salesforce, expanding our templates and reference architectures. So, we’re looking at things like: “how can we build a really great ‘hand off’ between, say, finding a reference architecture on architect.salesforce.com and working on customizing and refining it with your team in Lucidchart?” Internal architecture teams are really excited about what this could mean for their toolchains and workflows — we use Lucidchart internally, here at Salesforce! There are so many possibilities, as we work together across Salesforce, Lucidchart and Lucid Software. I’m really excited for the work that’s underway — and I strongly suggest everyone stay tuned for more news at Dreamforce.

Resources & what you can do now

Check out the links below to get started with Salesforce diagrams and learn more about Lucidchart.

• Introducing Salesforce Diagrams (blog)
• Diagram Resources & Templates (architect.salesforce.com)
• Lucidchart

About the Authors

Laura Luttmer is the lead product manager for Lucidchart. When she’s not thinking about the future of intelligent diagramming at Lucid, she can be found hiking in the Sandias, baking delicious yet ugly things, abandoning half-finished craft projects, and reading books with her cat. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.

Zayne Turner leads the Architect Relations team at Salesforce. You can connect with her on Twitter or LinkedIn.