Working with Mobile Apps

I learned about mobile apps this week. The experience reminded of the 45 Rule of Acquisition: Expand or Die. Working on this feature of Salesforce expanded my skill set and helped me prepare for the Certified App Builder Exam; mobile apps are ~3% of the exam. That might not seem like a lot, but one question can be the difference between pass or fail.

One of the neat things about working with Salesforce1 is that you can emulate it from your desktop with certain limitations (just append ‘one/one.app’ to your Salesforce URL). The org I am working with has not switched over to Lightning Experience so we get this error when we try:

Since we are not ready to switch over, I had to use the chrome desktop emulator. The chrome emulator was pretty easy to use and directions are here.

Figuring out the navigation bar, and in particular, the order of the elements presented the next challenge. If you start with the Today element, it won’t show up unless you activate it on your phone and it does not seem to work in the emulator. So while the emulator is useful, you still need your phone to check certain things.

Once that was done, I tackled the quick start actions. The process for setting these up did not differ from setting up actions on the desktop. Two things to note are:

1) You have to drag and drop on the layouts from the Salesforce1 and Lightning section; even though they are the same quick actions;

2)  There is an order to how they are displayed, so you can’t put them in the exact order you want. Check this link out for details.

I am on my way to customizing my first mobile app; I created my first useful quick action this week. I probably won't be able to post any screen shots but I need to build a few apps to prepare for certification and those I can share.