Getting Ready for the New Salesforce Mobile Experience
Salesforce will roll out a new mobile experience in February. Here are a few things admins should consider.
Like many working professionals, my phone is my personal computer. For work, I’m almost always on my laptop, but I can imagine a future where I only work on a mobile device. In this age in which we are reaching more and more for our mobile devices, Salesforce continues to improve upon their mobile experience.
In October’s Winter ’20 release, Salesforce rolled out a new mobile experience that customers could opt into. With the Spring ’20 release in February, this new mobile experience will be automatically rolled out to all users. While the new enhancements are exciting to see, there are a few things admins should anticipate, especially if their organizations are currently using the mobile app.
General navigation now matches desktop
With the new mobile experience, you can access the App Launcher and All Items menu as you can on desktop. This makes it possible to shift between the different apps that you work in and to have a more seamless experience between desktop and mobile.
Within a record page, your record-specific actions are now located on the top of the screen, just as they are on desktop. The bottom of the screen allows you to navigate through different tabs in Salesforce, with the first item being the first non-Home tab in the current app. If a user customizes their tab order on the desktop, those updates will display here, too. This is a great way for users to access the tabs they leverage most. There is a “Mobile Only” app, too, which follows your prior Salesforce Mobile Navigation as you’ve defined in the Setup area. Salesforce recommends keeping this app so that the shift to the new mobile experience is more seamless for users, but it may make sense to hide it.
Lightning Record Pages are now available
My favorite new mobile feature is that all the unique customizations you’ve added to your Lightning Record Pages are now available on your phone. The mobile record page is no longer dictated by only the page layout. There are a few “gotchas” to this overall experience, though.
Pages for phone form factor
The mobile experience will show the Lightning Record Pages that have been activated for the Phone form factor. If you do not activate a page for Phone, users will see a default page (similar to what is displayed if you have no Lightning Record Pages activated on desktop). You can update all your desktop-assigned pages to be available for phone at once through the New Salesforce Mobile App QuickStart, available in Setup, or you can go through each object individually to add the Phone form factor. This allows you to have a completely different Lightning Record Page for phone compared to desktop, or to leverage component visibility based on the device to dictate what displays in each experience.
Tabs
All the tabs you’ve configured on your Lightning Record Pages will display on the mobile screen, but they are all collapsed. If your users are used to seeing the details expanded on the mobile device, they now have to click “Details” to see the related details. If this does not seem optimal for you, you have a few options:
- Salesforce recommends leveraging the Highlights component to display up to ten of the most important fields. If your users are only looking at a few key fields, you may be able to leverage this approach. This may also improve the user experience on desktop, too.
- If you need the details to be expanded, you can remove the Record Detail component from the Tabs component on your Lightning Record Page within the App Builder. If the Record Detail is not embedded within a Tab component, it will show in full. If you want it to work this way on mobile but you still like your tabs on desktop (like me), Salesforce recommends leveraging component visibility based on device.
- Since you can now have a separate Lightning Record Page for phone than desktop, you can edit your phone Lightning Record Page to make sure the Record Detail component is not embedded within the Tabs component.
Limitations with Related Record component
The Related Record component allows you to leverage update Quick Actions to embed different fields within different areas of your Lightning Record Page. If you broke up your Classic Page Layout using this method, you would not have seen these sections on the old mobile experience. Now that the full Lightning Record Page is visible within the new mobile experience, your users will be able to review those fields on a mobile device. There are limitations to editing, however, as mobile doesn’t allow for users to double click a field to edit. You can add the Quick Action buttons to the page layout, but they’ll show on the desktop version, too.
Lightning Record Pages assigned by record type or app
If you have different Lightning Record Pages by record type or app, users will have to navigate into the app via the App Launcher to see the right page. The “Mobile Only” app will display the org default Lightning Record Page activated for Phone. (If you do not have any Lightning Record Pages activated for Phone, then Salesforce builds a generic page.) A little bit of communication and training will be necessary so that your users do not get confused, but once they’ve entered the correct app, the experience should be seamless for them.
Path and highlights
With this new experience, users will be able to leverage the Path component on custom objects. Previously this feature was only available on the Opportunity and Lead objects. If your users use the Path to navigate to the next stage on a custom object, they can easily do this on their mobile device. This means that users will no longer have to know what the next stage is and update a picklist manually. Additionally, the Path’s Guidance to Success and Key Fields sections are also available on the mobile experience for all objects. You can edit the key fields from within the section as you can on desktop.
All List Views are now available without having to access it on desktop first
This is a feature from the Spring ’19 release, but worth mentioning in case you haven’t reviewed the mobile release notes for a while. You now have the ability to review all the list views for each object just as you can on desktop. You’ll still see the lists or specific records you’ve recently accessed first but having the option to click to see the various list views is a huge improvement, especially if you have any mobile-only users.
Mobile Web Experience is going away
Although not in this Spring ’20 release, Salesforce has stated that there are plans for the Salesforce Mobile Web Experience to be retired with the Summer ’20 release. This upcoming change only supports you as admins prepare your org for the new mobile experience and train your users so that they know it’s available and can be transitioned to the mobile app before the mobile web experience is retired.
These are just a few highlights and considerations for admins as the new mobile experience is rolled out automatically to all users in just a few weeks. Given the right preparation and thought, it will improve user experiences and help us move in the direction of being able to use our mobile devices for all things personal and professional.
