You’ve decided to create a custom app in Salesforce. There are certain vital factors to think about before you begin. Like every Salesforce Application Development Services venture, success depends on efficient project management from the outset.
What does a Salesforce custom app entail?
A label, a description, and an organized list of components or tabs that cooperate to address a particular business issue are all included in a Salesforce Custom Application Development.
Why create a personalized Salesforce App?
For your company, creating a bespoke Salesforce app may make sense if the:
Cost-effective (vs. acquiring one from AppExchange) (versus purchasing one from AppExchange),
effortlessly connects with the apps you currently have,
has several applications and addresses demands across departments,
gives future flexibility for more customization.
In our work with clients, we’ve found a few crucial factors for the planning and design stage when thinking about creating your own unique Salesforce app.
Creating a Custom Salesforce App: Things to Take into Account
1. Be discerning while determining requirements
Specifying the outcomes you seek as you start this process is crucial rather than just repeating your current procedures.
How to specify desired outcomes when creating a custom Salesforce app:
A Salesforce Custom App Development may need to change business processes to achieve the desired results, so have an open mind when suggesting different approaches to reach the same goal.
Although Salesforce is a vital tool, not all tasks are best performed on this system. Using another product and integrating it with Salesforce may be necessary if an operational process becomes extremely complicated to design. For instance, complex commission calculations may need to remain in Excel or be handled by another tool or app.
Instead of being an afterthought, reporting needs should be considered during the design phase, as they can influence choices regarding field data types and object connections.
2. Look for previously used solutions
It’s crucial to assess your current Salesforce configuration and potential AppExchange solutions during the design phase.
When assessing existing options for your custom Salesforce app, consider the following questions:
Existing applications or items might be used to reduce customization. If so, are these objects linked to any Apex or Visualforce scripts? Make careful to account for the difficulty of upgrades or code alterations.
Exists a ready-made AppExchange app that accomplishes the same function?
To improve your Lightning app, look for pre-built Lightning Components.
3. Give visibility, security, and searchability careful consideration
Data security should be your priority when developing the data model for your app.
How to think about data security for your unique Salesforce app:
Object-level safety (CRUD), field-level security (FLS), and record-level security must be considered when creating a custom app.
This is especially crucial when third parties utilize the app via a Community.
Lookup connections enable more flexibility over the visibility of the connected records. In contrast, master-detail relationships mandate that users, including Community users who can see the master records, also have access to the detailed information.
Before putting the bespoke app into production, user-based access needs to be thoroughly validated.
Test reports and dashboards based on user profiles may present different results to various users depending on the field, object, and record-level security.
Even if you intend to leave the tab out of the app’s navigation, consider creating charges for objects that need to be searchable, as only custom objects with their accounts are included in search results.
4. Verify that your application will work with current systems.
Customized applications don’t exist in a vacuum. Changes you make could have an effect later on, particularly if you are interacting with other business systems or including standard items.
How to be sure that your personal Salesforce Application Development Platform will work with other platforms:
Use existing fields whenever you can when reusing standard objects; you can add picklist values to picklist fields and only assign them to a particular record type. Be careful not to use everyday objects’ field help or other field-level attributes as your own. Consider making a field on the page layout mandatory instead of making an existing field mandatory because the latter can easily break Apex test classes.
You should build new record types and layouts to distinguish between new sorts of Accounts and Contacts relevant to your app if your app uses everyday objects like Accounts and Contacts. Filters based on record type or other criteria may need to be added to existing reports.
Check the repurposed objects’ current triggers, validation rules, processes, and workflows; you might need to add a condition based on record type.
Remember to adhere to the naming rules and styles used by your company.
When integrating systems, think about if real-time data queries from external systems are preferable to storing the data in Salesforce. For instance, Salesforce Connect can retrieve real-time data from external objects and generate reports without saving the data in Salesforce.
5. Maintain data integrity to avoid dirty data.
Salesforce Development Agency offers a variety of options for app designers to protect data integrity. Utilizing these will promote the adoption of your app.
How to avoid acquiring inaccurate data while creating your own Salesforce application:
The app’s usability can be enhanced while generating cleaner, more valuable data through validation rules, default values, and workflow field modifications.
Duplicate records can be avoided with the aid of matching rules and the same rules.
When interacting with external systems, use specific External ID fields.
6. Keep the custom app straightforward.
The urge to include every bell and whistle and account for every potential corner case should be resisted. Doing so takes more time and may make maintenance considerably more challenging in the long term.
Lastly, Considerations for Creating a Custom Salesforce App
Building a custom app in Salesforce can significantly increase the advantages that Salesforce offers your firm and automate entire procedures.
Following our advice and investing the effort in the planning and design phase will ensure that your implementation runs well.
