Salesforce.com has recently announced a new feature called Lightning Object Creator. It turns spreadsheets into Apps with just a few clicks. This can be very powerful for admins to quickly get routine spreadsheets up and running in salesforce.com. No more passing around spreadsheets and then going through the consolidation efforts. This lowers the risk of data loss, typos, miscommunication, etc.
The announcement suggests that it will go GA in 2019. We are looking forward to seeing the capabilities of this new feature.
Here are some details from the original salesforce.com blog:
Lightning Object Creator opens up a broad set of use cases for offline processes currently built on spreadsheets that can be transformed into modern cloud applications. For example:
The Value of a Custom Object
If Lightning Object Creator is all about building apps, why do we call it an “object creator”? What exactly is a Custom Object on the Salesforce Lightning Platform?
To get started, it’s easy to think of a Custom Object as a very special kind of spreadsheet that helps customize applications to fit the needs of a business. It has rows (records) and columns (fields) just like a traditional spreadsheet. But there is so much more to a Custom Object than just a spreadsheet.
First of all, it is a cloud-hosted application, which means that Salesforce handles all of the underlying infrastructure. This includes things such as a focus on customer success and trust, and a secure, multi-tenant infrastructure that scales for every single customer around the world.
At the same time, Lighting Platform is a full low-code platform that empowers everyone to build apps fast, with each object supporting:
The Low Code Revolution
At Salesforce, we believe that building apps is everyone’s business. By empowering business users to participate in the app building process, we increase the pool of talent, bring problem-solving closer to the lines of business that need support, and reduce time to market.
A recent IDC white paper reported a 545% ROI over five years for customers doing development on the Lightning Platform, with a six month payback period. By leveraging low-code capabilities, customers reported a 5.8X increase in features developed by business users and a 63% faster app lifecycle. One customer reported, “The democratization of development is the most significant benefit of using the Lightning Platform.”
When spreadsheets are converted into custom objects on the Lightning Platform, they can instantly be configured, connected, and deployed via a powerful set of builder tools, including:
To make it even easier to build apps fast with clicks, there is a tight integration between Lightning App Builder and Lighting Object Creator, so that citizen developers can instantly configure their new custom apps off of imported spreadsheets.