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At Dreamforce ‘18, we promised to make app creation easier and faster when we introduced Lightning Object Creator, our latest low-code app development tool that turns spreadsheets into apps with just a few clicks. Today, we are excited to announce Lightning Object Creator is now generally available. For those of you who missed our Dreamforce announcement, Lightning Object Creator is a new platform tool that boosts productivity by allowing any admins to quickly turn spreadsheets — such as Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, and comma-separated value (.csv) files — into modern, cloud-based apps with clicks.

 

Eliminating data silos one spreadsheet at a time

As companies strive to transform digitally and provide better customer and employee experiences, the number one challenge resides in the data silos of manual processes and the use of spreadsheets. Lightning Object Creator is designed to turn these manual workflows into custom objects with populated data within the Salesforce Lightning Platform. By making it super easy to create these custom objects, companies can leverage all the benefits of a modern cloud platform, including:

  • Collaboration: a social feed built into every object
  • Instant mobility: simple deployment across desktop and mobile devices
  • A configurable user interface (UI): including interface elements such as buttons, links, and actions, so that different users can have different, personalized experiences based on their business requirements
  • Workflow and triggers: automating core business process execution with ease
  • Activity tracking and field history: enabling additional insight, control, and compliance
  • Custom relationships: easily associate different objects via different relationship types for added value
 

How it works

With Lightning Object Creator, admins can turn a 7-8 step process that takes hours to complete into a task that only takes a few minutes and three simple steps. You can access the creator UI from the Create button on the Object Manager page in Setup or from the Navigation Items tab inside a Lightning app. To start, upload an Excel or CSV file or choose a file using one of our integrations with Microsoft Office 365 and Google Cloud.

Next, Lightning Object Creator will automatically detect the fields and populate all its record data. You can customize the Salesforce field name and field type or leave them as suggested. Additionally, you can choose to add a particular field to multiple page layouts directly within the mapping screen.
Finally, you have granular control of the object’s features, including enabling Chatter for the object, and allowing search and reporting.

 

That’s it! By clicking Finish, you have turned rows and columns of static data into an interactive data object with all the benefits of a cloud-hosted application. 

 

The low code journey doesn’t just end at object creation

By creating custom objects, you now have unlocked the ability to plug the data into a wide range of low-code builder tools from process automation to mobile app development, including:

  • Lightning Flow: allows you to define business processes with clicks — not code — that automate business processes and connected actions in new custom applications
  • Lighting App Builder: allows you to configure the UI, combine multiple objects, and instantly deploy mobile apps based on custom objects
  • Lightning Schema Builder: allows you to define custom relationships between data, whether they are related objects or parent/child relationships
  • Lightning Components from AppExchange: allow you to easily drop in pre-built functionality from the Salesforce ecosystem to accelerate your time to value

Lightning Object Creator is available today in Lightning Experience and in Contact, Manager, Group, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions.

Get started today by uploading a spreadsheet — and turning it into a custom object with data already filled in!