Salesforce is moving to give administrators the ability to integrate processes via the Salesforce Lightning user interface across its software-as-a-service (SaaS) environment without any programming skills being required.
Developers and IT teams will still need to set up the environment, but once configured, a Dynamic Interactions tool will allow administrators to enable one component running on a Lightning page hosted on the core Salesforce Platform to automatically update other components on the page without requiring a developer to write any additional code.
Each component exposed by Lightning App Builder user interface (UI) by developers defines the set of events that are supported, which can then be invoked by other components. Capabilities that will be embedded in Lightning App Builder later this year will enable an administrator to integrate components to create interactions between them.
Enabled by the low-code development platform that Salesforce has embedded within its core platform, the goal is make it simple to create interactive application experiences based on real-time events. Previously, that level of interactivity between components would have required developers to spend a lot of time programming that capability, said Ryan Ellis, senior vice president of product management for platform at Salesforce. “It used to require a lot of code,” he says.
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Empowering End Users
As application environments continue to evolve, more capabilities are being made available directly to end users that don’t require any additional effort on the part of either developers or IT operations to enable once the platform is configured. The implications of that shift are profound because end users will be able to:
- Dynamically configure workflows without first waiting for a developer to find the time to write the code
- Locate someone in IT operations willing to support that project once the developer moves on to their next project.
Giving end users more control doesn’t mean there will be less of a need for developers and IT professionals any time soon, but it does mean many of the routine tasks they are regularly asked to perform will, over time, start to fade away. As application environments are increasingly embedded with low-code and no-code tools, many of the tasks that developers and IT professionals need to take on will be less tedious. Hopefully, that shift will go a long way to reducing burnout in the IT community that is all too prevalent.
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Remaining Vigilant
It remains to be seen how aggressively end users will embrace these capabilities. Making a capability available is not quite the same thing as adoption. However, there is plenty of frustration among end users who are tired of waiting on understaffed internal IT teams to address one issue or another. Many younger employees, as so-called digital natives, are not especially intimidated by application software that they, in one form or another, have been employing their whole life.
IT organizations will need to keep an eye on how end users are employing these capabilities. There are always going to be overly ambitious attempts to create workflows that are either simply too complex or violate any number of compliance mandates. Nevertheless, end users, whether developers and IT professionals approve or not, are about to become a lot more empowered.
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