Build a Custom Home Page for Lightning Experience

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Create a custom Home page for your Lightning Experience users
  
• Assign different Home pages to different profiles
  
• Set the default Home page
  

Accessibility

This unit requires some additional instructions for screen reader users. To access a detailed screen reader version of this unit, click the link below:

Open Trailhead screen reader instructions.

Yes, You Can Customize Your Lightning Experience Home Page

Give your users everything they need to manage their day from the Home page in Lightning Experience. Your sales reps can see their quarterly performance summary and get important updates on critical tasks and opportunities. You can also customize the page for different types of users and assign custom pages to different apps and app-and-profile combinations.

You can create a custom Home page in a few different ways: Create it from scratch using a template, clone it from another custom Home page, or edit a page from the Home tab in a Lightning app.

To edit an existing page, you can click from the Home page, and then select Edit Page to create a copy of the current page to edit. If a customized page exists and is active, selecting Edit Page opens that page to edit.

We’re going to create a Home page from scratch.

Beyond the Basics: When you select Edit Page for the first time, Salesforce makes a copy of the standard page. This copy is what you then edit in the Lightning App Builder. Pages created like this—as copies—retain a reference to the standard page, which means that Salesforce can upgrade the page copies for you with new capabilities in the future. If you create a page from scratch, then you own it completely and new page capabilities Salesforce rolls out don’t appear automatically.

Create a Custom Home Page for Lightning Experience

Tweak the position of the components on the standard Home page layout slightly to give you an idea of what’s possible.

Get started!

1. From Setup, enter App Builder in the Quick Find box, then click Lightning App Builder.
   
2. Click New, select Home Page, then click Next.
   
3. Step through the wizard and name the page New Home Page, select the Standard Home Page template, and then click Done.
   An empty Home page opens, ready for you to build it. The components pane contains all the standard components available for a Home page, plus any custom components you have installed in your org.
   
4. Drag the Assistant component to the top-right region.
   
5. Drag Performance to the top-left region.
   
6. Add Today’s Events to the lower left region and add Key Deals to the lower right region.
   
7. Add Today’s Tasks above the Assistant.
   
8. Click Save. 
   

Saving the page isn’t enough to get it out to your users. Lightning pages must be activated before your users can see them. Normally, if you aren’t done with your page, or aren’t ready to make it public, you can click Not Yet here to save the page and return to the App Builder. But you’re done with your page and want to give it to your users right now!

9. Click Activate, and you do just that.
   

If you saved previously and didn’t activate the page, you can click the Activation button in the toolbar to be ready for the next section.

Roll Out Your Custom Home Page to Your Lightning Experience Users

When activating a Home page, you have three different options: You can make your page the default for everyone in the org, the default for an app, or assign it to one or more app and profile combinations, giving your users access to a page designed just for their role.

Now assign this home page to the System Administrator profile so you can go look at it afterward.

1. Click App and Profile, then click Assign to Apps and Profiles.
   
2. Select the Sales app, then click Next.
   
3. Scroll down the list of profiles and select System Administrator, then click Next.
   
4. Review the assignment, and then click Save.
   

That’s it. Now all users with the System Administrator profile see your New Home Page while working in the Sales app. Have a look.

Look at Your Handiwork

Just for reference, here’s an example of the standard default Home page. Think of this as the “before” in this Home page makeover.

Now, compare it to what you did.

1. Navigate to the Home page of the Sales app in Lightning Experience.
   Here’s what it looks like now. It’s not a whole lot different than before, but you can see that some components are in new places. 
   

2. Bask in the glory of your newfound page customization skills.
   

All right! Now, move on to record pages.

Resources

• Salesforce Help: Set Up the Lightning Experience Home Page
  
• Salesforce Help: Set a New Default Home Page
  
• Salesforce Help: Lightning Experience Home Permissions and Settings