In thinking about the Salesforce Lightning Experience UI (LEX) from an Admin perspective, there are key differences from the Classic UI that are important to highlight. In this post I’ll review the difference between the ‘Lightning App Builder’ and ‘App Manager’ in the Lightning setup menu and how I remember the distinction between the two. In addition, I will review what is different in terms of configuring Page Layouts. If you are used to configuring in Classic, then you are probably used to Record Types and Page Layouts; however, in Lightning, enter the Lightning Record Page to manage as well. I will dive into how you can think about this new piece to your layout puzzle and the cool new capabilities that Lightning Record Pages offer you.
Lightning App Builder vs. App Manager. These sound basically the same, but one manages your app pages and one manages your apps…huh?!
Lightning App Builder is where you ‘build’ your individual Lightning Record pages:
App Manager is where you ‘manage’ and create your Salesforce apps as you are used to thinking about them:
How about Record Types, Page Layouts, and Lightning Record Pages. Page Layouts are the collection of fields your user will see when they look at an individual record in Salesforce. This is assigned at the Profile Level, so you can vary the Page Layout assigned by Profile. In other words, on an individual record one user could see a completely different collection of fields than the next. Even if they have the same Page Layout assigned, if their profile or permission sets do not give them access to an individual field, they may not see all the fields on the Page Layout.
Then you layer on Record Types. Record Types allow you to vary separate business processes under the same object. Using a simple example, you may have different ways of selling Hardware vs. Software on Opportunities, with different Stages of the sales process and different values available in your Picklist fields. A new Record Type is the way to solve for this. It is important to note that it is best practice not to overuse Record Types as this creates additional overhead from an administration perspective. Along with your new Record Type, you will likely have at least one new Page Layout to manage, and could have multiple, depending if different Profiles need to see different layouts.
When you move to Lightning, you now have this third piece to consider, the Lightning Record Page. This does not replace Page Layouts and Record Types. You can instead think of this as a supplement to give you additional flexibility. The Lightning Record Page is a grouping of components, both custom and native, that ultimately are the page that your end users will see. Your Page Layout will only be one piece of what your end users see on the overall Lightning Record Page. My next post will cover how you can utilize these components to the fullest to surface what your users need to see when they need to see it.
5Coats of Salesforce 