Dynamic Actions, Pages and Migrations, Oh My!

Dynamic Forms were first teased at Dreamforce 2019, but the notion itself has had to have been in every user or admin's mind at some point over Salesforce's lifetime.  The original idea from the IdeaExchange for dependent page layouts is 13+ years old itself.

I can remember some of my early orgs with an unmanageable number of page layouts and records types on Cases in order to show/hide collections of fields based on the status of the Case, the Account's support entitlements, affected products, warranty or return status, etc.  It could get labyrinthian trying to navigate where and when to make changes, managing the workflows needed to change Record Types, and then trying to document it was a bit of nightmare itself. 

Serving up users the right information in the right context at the right time was the utopia, but so often many trade-offs were required to keep things manageable and scalable. 

With the Summer '20 Release, we're inching ever-closer to that promised land.  And Salesforce is bringing it to us with Low Code tools!  There's never been a more exciting time to be an Admin in the Salesforce world. 

Dynamic Forms

With the Summer '20 release, much of Dynamic Forms is getting ready for prime time, with Dynamic Forms in Non-GA Preview and Dynamic Actions in Beta.

With Dynamic Forms, you can add fields and sections from your page layout as individual components into the Lightning App Builder and can configure them just like the rest of the components on the page. 

Drag and drop fields into sections onto the page, independent of Page Layouts.  No need to build workaround with Update Actions and Related Record components to make field sets/sections.  We have the palette at our disposal. 

What's more, with Conditional Visibility, we have the opportunity to provide our users only the fields and sections that they need - based on the context of the record and its relationships, or the running user and their permissions. 

Game-changer.

Want to collect post-mortem notes on a project? Great. Don't want the empty field taking up space on projects in progress?  Consider it hidden. 

Want a custom button to launch an approval process or wizard of some sort?  Only want that to appear to certain reps who might need the extra guidance?  We can do that. 

The potential use cases are countless. 
That being said, baby steps... 

At this time, Dynamic Forms is supported on record pages for custom objects only, so those dreams of complex dynamic opportunity and case pages with conditional visibility at field level are on hold for the time being.  And, keep in mind that it's still considered a Non-GA Preview feature, so Safe Harbor applies, and there's no guarantee of general availability of this feature within any particular time frame or at all. 

I guess the TL;DR here is:

Dynamic Forms: get hyped, but be patient.

Lift, Shift, Re-imagine

When I first saw Dynamic Forms in action, my first thought was "Holy crap this is amazing!" 
My second thought was "Holy crap this is going to create a lot of work". 

As a solo Admin, the prospect of having to rebuild every page layout in Lightning App Builder seemed daunting.  Don't get me wrong, amazing, but a lot of effort.

Last week at TrailheaDX, in the LowCodeLove: From Dynamic Experiences to Walkthroughs breakout, we were treated to a demo of Dynamic Forms in action... 

including a migration wizard that converts existing page layouts into Dynamic Forms.

My jaw hit the floor in this session. Absolutely blown away. 

(If you missed this one, or any of the other great TrailheaDX content, do check out the sessions on-demand to play catch up.)

With this migration wizard you can migrate the fields and sections from your existing record pages as individual components in the Lightning App Builder to be configured just like the rest of the components on page. 



This really makes the process seamless, and I'm looking forward to getting my hands dirty. 


Looking beyond the cool factor, and the ease of use, the biggest thing to keep in mind with Dynamic Forms is the opportunity it presents.  We're at a point where we can thoroughly re-imagine how our stable of pages behave, and how our users interact with them. 

There's an opportunity to share the excitement with users, and really understand what they need and don't need at different stages in a record's lifecycle, and find new an exciting ways to tailor the experience to them to help them work more efficiently and effectively.  If ever there was a time for Admins to get the Salesforce Kool-Aid out and spread it around the (virtual) office, it's now.  While these features are in Non-GA Preview, the time is now to rethink our orgs, and what we can do with Lightning. 

Exciting times to be an Admin.