Introduction
Businesses globally are leveraging Salesforce Experience Cloud Sites, formally known as Salesforce Communities to accelerate digital transformation and build customer-first digital experiences. With Experience Cloud, you get access to the same CRM data that your org consumes. Experience Cloud heavily relies on out-of-the-box (OTB) features such as templates, themes, adding components and content to the site via clicks. One such OTB component that is often used is the Feed Publisher aka Feed. Feeds are heavily used in communities to post updates, ask questions, share links or videos with others in the community.
Use case
Salesforce communities have Groups. Groups are used for collaboration by members with a common goal. In one of the Lattice Squad engagements, the customer community had Groups created based on the geographical location i.e a Group APAC is Asia Pacific, EMEA is Europe, etc. The users belonging to the respective group want to upload and share videos among the group members. The default OTB Feed attaches the video instead of rendering it in the feed i.e the user is asked to download the video to view it instead of playing it in the browser. The use case was to change the default behavior so that the video renders in the feed. RPAs provide the framework to accomplish this.
Rich Publisher App to Rescue
We want to change the above behavior by developing code that enables the Feed to render the video in the browser. To learn how to develop RPAs, you may find this trailhead module helpful. This blog post doesn’t aim to educate on how to write RPAs. Instead, it aims to share the code for the above use case and demonstrate the expected outcome!
RPA in Action
Conclusion
Rich Publisher Apps provide a framework to make your community Feeds more dynamic and interactive. Technically, Aura Lightning Components are authored adhering to the constructs of the RPA framework or you could get the Apps from Salesforce AppExchange. There are many use cases RPAs can be applied to depending on the business problem you’re trying to solve. The first step towards writing a great custom App is to ask the question, ‘What specific Feed Enhancement Feature will bring the greatest convenience and/or competitive advantage to the business”.
