Add a Utility bar to your Lightning Apps

By | March 28, 2017

Salesforce Spring ’17 has bought a bunch of handy features to the table, especially when it comes to Lightning. While the majority of these features are minor in detail and some might even go unnoticed, but they are all useful when it comes to providing the user a better experience. Once such small feature introduced by Salesforce in its Spring ’17 release is giving the user to add a Utility bar to your Lightning App. This utility bar will consist of components that the user can access without leaving the current page.

So, what is a Utility bar and what does this Utility bar do? A utility bar combines the features from Salesforce Classic’s home page components and the footer components from Salesforce Classic console apps. In this Utility bar, the user will have access to items that are available on the home page. The user instead of moving from one page to another can just click on the respective label or icon from the Utility bar and then a notification type box will open which will contain the details of the same.

To add a Utility bar to your app is a very simple task. Here are detailed instructions on how to do so-
-> From the “Setup” perform a quick search in the quick find box for “App Manager”.
-> Click on “App Manager” option, the list of all your apps will be visible once you are redirected to the App Manager page.
-> Select one of the Apps which has App type “Lightning”.
-> If all your apps have “App Type” as “Classic” then you can convert/upgrade an app to Lightning. Note- When an app is converted to Lightning no functionality of the previously available app is hindered.
-> To convert an App into “Lightning”, click on the dropdown that’s present at the very end of the app and click on “Upgrade”.
-> Once you click on “Upgrade” option you’ll be asked to enter the “App Name” and its Api/Developer Name and click on “Upgrade”.

Upgrading an app to lightning

Upgrading an app to lightning

Upgrading an App

Upgrading an App

-> Now that a new Lightning app is created again, click on the same drop down and click on “Edit”. The edit page for that App would open.

Editing the App

Editing the App

-> Click on “Utility bar” section.
-> Under “Utility Bar Items” click on “Add” for adding the items.

Available Items for selection

Available Items for selection

-> While adding the items you can add an icon mention the height and width. Once all the items are added save your changes and click on “Done”.

Adding items to utility bar

Adding items to utility bar

-> Now visit the app you’ll notice that the utility bar is present at the bottom of the page like a “Footer”.

-> Now if you click on one of the options from the utility bar a notification like window will pop displays the contents.

Utility bar

Utility bar

The utility bar can be accessed from any page within that respective App. This helps to access objects and components that the user more often uses without leaving the current page which helps for multitasking. Checking chatter feeds, recent activities and other such activities can be done through the utility bar. For better visibility add only those components which are used by you more often.

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