I’m a Salesforce MVP and I build apps on the Lightning Platform. I spend most of my time helping businesses create apps and integrations to tap into the Salesforce ecosystem. The best part of it all: I get to work on a variety new ideas for companies of all sizes across all industries. That means there’s really never a dull moment for me. In fact, it’s such an exciting space to work in that I just recently published an entire ebook about how to build business-changing apps on the Lightning Platform.

To understand why this is so important today, let’s start with the basics.

The Lighting Platform is, first and foremost, known for its extensive low code capabilities. This basically means that starting any app project with Salesforce is pretty easy. Simply put, I can take a concept off the ground in a matter of hours using the platform’s point-and-click tools, such as: Object Manager (to build data models and configure page layouts for apps), Lightning Flow (to build front-end form logic and UI with built-in navigation), Process Builder and Workflows (to add logics that automate business processes), Salesforce Connect and other external data services (to achieve integration with external endpoints), and Profiles and Roles (to configure data security).

Because I deal with complex requirements for enterprise-level apps, I often find myself extending the capabilities of these apps with code in order to customize the user experience, create complex business logic, or address advanced integration needs. I am able to do this all by building custom Lightning components. And once I’ve created a new custom component for one app, it can be leveraged across all apps within the Salesforce ecosystem. Salesforce admins can easily access these components via App Builder, use them as a part of Lightning Flow, or even override standard buttons and actions directly in Salesforce.

While leveraging components for multiple apps is just one of the many benefits made available through the Lightning Platform, there’s a lot more you can do once you advance from clicks to code. That’s why I decided to pour my experience of writing thousands of lines of code into useful tips and tricks that you can use today to unlock the superpowers of the Lightning Platform. Here’s just a sneak peek at what you can do:

1. Improve user experience with custom Lightning components

On the Lightning Platform you can build custom components that tap into multiple data sources in order to create beautiful, engaging user experiences that go way beyond the capabilities of standard components. And by layering code from third-party open source libraries (ChartJs, D3,Jquery, React, etc.) onto these custom components, you can create custom user interfaces (UI) while minimizing overall development effort — especially when using Salesforce DX (see below).

2. Speed up the app development lifecycle with Salesforce DX

You can accelerate the development of your app with Salesforce Developer Experience. Salesforce DX is an intuitive tool for source-driven development that gives developers access to both the command-line interface (CLI) and integrated development environments (IDE) of their choosing. Even though these tools might seem foreign to most Admins at first, the value associated with managing and deploying custom code with these tools will become readily apparent. Even more, Salesforce DX can be easily integrated into the CI (Continuous Integration) and CD (Continuous Delivery) systems to accelerate application delivery. All of this means that Admins and Developers can build and deploy apps at a faster pace than ever before.

3. Easily unit test Lightning components and Apex code

The Lightning Platform provides robust testing frameworks (Lightning Testing Service (LTS) for Lightning components and Apex Unit Tests for Apex server-side programming) so developers can test their code thoroughly. This essentially means that Admins and Developers now have a single platform through which they can complete every step of the app development process, further empowering them to build, test, and publish apps at massive and meaningful scale.

Ready to learn more and start developing apps of your own? Be sure to download my ebook, “Learning Salesforce Lightning Application Development.” It’s full of useful references that can help both pro and novice developers build high-performance components on Lightning at scale. And to take an even deeper dive, be sure to check out all of our resources on Trailhead and Developer Documentation.