Elevate Your Daily Productivity
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Kick off global actions and work with docked composers.
- Identify new features on the Home page.
- Use keyboard shortcuts.
Get Ready to Get Stuff Done
If you earned the Lightning Experience for Salesforce Classic Users badge, you already started exploring the new Salesforce user interface. Now it’s time to check out the Lightning Experience productivity-enhancers that make the common things you do every day so much easier or faster—or both.
Want to Get Hands-on with Lightning Experience?
Launch your Trailhead Playground now to follow along and try out the steps in this module. To access your Trailhead Playground, first, make sure you are logged in to Trailhead. Then click your user avatar in the upper-right corner of this page and select Hands-on Orgs from the dropdown. Click Launch next to the org you want to open. Or, if you want to create a new playground, click Create Playground.
You also use the playground when it's time to complete the hands-on challenge in unit 4.
Spin Those Plates, You Multitasker
With so much going on every day (and week and quarter), you have to be able to multitask effectively. Lightning Experience sets you up to be a multitasking pro with two new options: the Global Actions menu and the utility bar. Both options are always just a click away, so you can seamlessly act when inspiration strikes, without switching away from other work in progress. Let’s take a closer look.
Act Globally
The Global Actions menu is at your beck and call, always available from the Lightning Experience header. Need to send an email to a contact? Or start a new opportunity? Just click the 
icon. Take a look at the default Global Actions menu. Your Salesforce admin may set up a different set of actions for your org.
Need to write that email and opportunity at the same time? Forget about juggling multiple browser tabs. Each global action you fire off opens a dedicated composer window at the bottom of the page. If there are more composer windows than fit on the screen, they stack up in an overflow menu.
Ready for the truly cool part? Composer windows are docked to the bottom of the screen. So they stay put if you navigate to other pages. You can minimize windows that are in the way. And if you’re a fan of keyboard shortcuts, you’ll love the options for navigating across multiple open windows. See Keyboard Shortcuts for Lightning Experience Composer Windows in Salesforce Help for all the details.
What’s in a Name?
You might be tempted to think the Global Actions menu is so named because it’s available everywhere. But in fact, it’s because all of the options in the menu are global actions that create records without an automatic relationship to other records or the current page. (Although you can easily assign relationships if you want.) The beauty of the Global Actions menu is you can instantly create just what you need without needing to navigate somewhere else first.
Wield a Swiss Army Utility Bar
The Lightning Experience header at the top of your screen gives you handy tools like the Global Actions menu. And at the bottom of your screen you have another awesome resource: the utility bar.
The utility bar is a fixed footer where you can quickly access handy utilities and common productivity tools, such as Notes, Quip, a flow launcher, telephony features... even custom options that your admin whips up.
Utilities open in docked panels, similar to the composer windows we just talked about. So you have the same flexibility to navigate around while working with utilities.
Your org’s standard and console apps can have their own dedicated utility bars, each with a unique set of utilities. But the utility bar isn’t displayed in apps by default. If you don’t see a utility bar in the apps you use, ask your admin to consider turning it on.
Your Home Base
Ah, the trusted Salesforce Classic Home page. The sturdy bedrock/shining beacon/loyal labradoodle that’s (probably) greeted you upon logging in to Salesforce for quite some time now. Here’s what the default classic Home page looks like. If your org uses the home page, it may look different.
We’ve redesigned the Lightning Experience Home page to be your base of operations, with a slew of new features to help you manage your day and focus on what’s important. Some features, like your recently viewed records and upcoming tasks are still on the Home page. Other features, such as Chatter and your calendar, have moved elsewhere.
Truth is, your Salesforce admin can design the Lightning Experience Home page to include just about anything that your org needs. Your admin can also create different custom Home pages for different profiles. So if you don’t see some of the new options on your Home page—or if you’re sorely missing features from your Classic Home page—ask your admin if it’s possible to refine things for you.
Here’s what the default Lightning Experience Home page looks like.
The performance chart (1) displays data based on opportunities belonging to you or your sales team. Only opportunities for the current sales quarter that are closed or open with a probability over 70% are displayed.
The Assistant (2) shows you things that you need to address, including:
- Leads assigned to you today
- Opportunities with overdue tasks
- Opportunities with no activity in 30 days
- Opportunities with no open activity
- Overdue opportunities
With News (3), you can get timely news articles about customers, partners, and competitors. You can also see the next five meetings on your calendar today (4), and up to five tasks due today (5).
The Recent Records card (6) gives you fast access to your recently viewed records. And Top Deals (7) is a convenient list of your top open opportunities.
Speed Through Work with Keyboard Shortcuts
Helping to cut through the tedium and the mundane, we give you keyboard shortcuts. You can search for, edit, save, and close records, all without touching a mouse.
Here are keyboard shortcuts to speed up the most common tasks.
Command |
Description |
Shortcut |
|---|---|---|
|
Global
| ||
Close or deselect |
Close or deselect a window. You can’t close some windows and dialogs with this shortcut. |
Esc |
Edit |
Edit a record. This shortcut doesn’t work with Lightning Knowledge articles, reports, dashboards, feed items, approval requests, and email messages. |
e |
Insert quick text |
Displays the quick text browser. Use the browser to find, preview, and insert quick text. |
Windows: Ctrl+. macOS: Cmd+. |
Open or close Macros |
Opens or closes the Macros utility. |
m |
Open or close Notes |
Opens or closes the Notes utility. To use this shortcut, first open the utility. |
n |
Post to feed |
Submits a post or comment. You can submit posts, comments, and questions with details. This shortcut doesn’t work on other publisher actions, such as emails and polls. |
Windows: Ctrl+Enter macOS: Cmd+Enter |
Save |
Save a record. Your focus must be on a field. |
Windows: Ctrl+s macOS: Cmd+s |
Search |
Places your cursor in the search box. |
/ |
Show shortcut menu |
Displays the available shortcuts in a modal window. |
Windows: Ctrl+/ macOS: Cmd+/ |
|
Navigation
| ||
Focus notifications |
Focuses the notification panel. Press the shortcut again to focus the next notification. |
c |
Focus notifications (reverse order) |
Focuses the notification panel. Press the shortcut again to focus the previous notification. |
Shift+c |
Go to composer window |
Goes to the docked composer window. |
g, then d |
Go to publisher |
Takes you to the publisher. If your publisher has multiple actions, you can use the Tab and arrow keys to navigate within the publisher. |
g, then p |
Go to prompts |
Goes to the prompt. |
Windows: Ctrl+F6 macOS: Cmd+F6 |
Go to utility bar |
Goes to the utility bar. |
g, then u |
Switch walkthrough focus |
When the walkthrough window is displayed over the app, this shortcut lets you switch focus between the walkthrough and the app. |
F6 |
When you work with keyboard shortcuts, keep these things in mind:
- You can’t customize keyboard shortcuts in Lightning Experience.
- Keyboard shortcuts aren’t case-sensitive. For example, Shift+B is the same as Shift+b. If Ctrl, Alt, or Shift is part of the shortcut, the sequence of the keys doesn’t matter. For example, Ctrl+Alt+A is the same as Alt+Ctrl+A.
- For shortcuts that specify “then,” release the first key, or key combo, before typing the next key. The comma isn’t part of the shortcut.
- Keyboard shortcuts are supported on U.S. and U.K. keyboards. Shortcuts that include / (forward slash) and . (period) aren't supported on other language keyboards.
- Lightning Experience keyboard shortcuts don’t work on Salesforce Classic apps viewed in Lightning Experience or in Visualforce or iFramed components.
Resources