Where Do I Upload Topic Descriptions In Napili Salesforce Template

With the launch of Salesforce Community Deject, Salesforce have made it easier and faster than ever earlier to deliver mobile showtime, elegantly designed communities to your customers, employees and partners.

"Now y'all can build Rome in a day" headlines the advisory pages on the website. Terms such as Community Templates and Community Designer sit alongside promises of setting upwardly communities which not also look adept, but are piece of cake to configure and leverage the considerable benefits of the Salesforce platform.

So far so good. But how skillful? A mutual issue I have institute with template interfaces I've used in the by is finding that sweet spot between a great, just ultimately limited starting point, and something far too complex to add together real long term value.

The real question here and so, is what have Salesforce done to solve this riddle?

Enter Lightning Components!

In addition to the more noticeable (read: 'looks swish') Lightning Design System and Lightning Experience under the Lightning umbrella, the Lightning Component framework under the hood is the real game changer for Communities.

Lightning Components enable development of functionality in a portable fashion. It's like building a bike for a car. The wheel will work for whatever car you could think of. Information technology doesn't affair if it'due south a Ferrari or a Skoda, or even a Harley Davidson if yous idea it would look cool.

"Does this hateful you tin can put a car wheel on a Salesforce community?"

Not exactly, but you can certainly create your ain Lightning Components to sit alongside the broiled-in Customs Templates provided past Salesforce. And what'south better, is that once they accept been developed once, you tin can use the community builder to simply drag-and-drop components onto your templated mobile optimised customs.

This tin exist done past a community manager, administrator, the office pet, person on the street or anyone with opposable thumbs. And because the template has been created in such a way that yous are playing "within it", not "with it", you tin be certain that all your community components fit within the framework of the community and it's template without impacting whatsoever of it's neighbouring components.

Let'south Build Rome in a Day (kind of)

In only 5 steps, I'll have yous from nil*, to a new Community Template and "Hello World" Lightning Component sitting right there on the home folio.

*This may even make you a hero in the eyes of your client, boss, parents or significant other.

i. Permit'south start with Community Templates

Community Templates, such as the first-class Napili, Koa and Kokua provide super-quick, out of the box communities based on a few different use cases and scenarios.

Picking one may be preference of way, or certain features might sway yous ane mode or the other (such as the Customs Q&A which is part of the Napili Template).

In Salesforce: Navigate to Communities > New Customs and selection a Template. (I'll pick Napili in this instance)

Use the wizard to provide a Proper noun for your Portal and an optional Base URL, printing create and nail!

Congratulations, you've built your Customs.

2. Navigate to the Community Architect

You'll be greeted with a Success message, and invited to take a look at the customs via the management screen. Take them up on the offering and proceed to Community Management!

From here y'all can exercise a whole load of really important and absurd stuff, such as view engagement insights ("who logs in at the weekend"), moderate rogue contributors ("who uses naughty words") and generally just become the jist of what people are actually talking about in your community.

We'll relieve that for another 24-hour interval, however. For the purpose of this article we'll navigate the the customs builder.

Proceed to it as per the image below.

3. Agreement the "Pages" Tab.

The community architect provides everything yous demand to update the branding of your page and the construction of the pages within it. Navigating to the Pages tab (below the paintbrush) and you'll run across a list of pre-congenital Lightning Components provided by Salesforce.

From here, you can drag and drib these pre-built components onto the Pages in the builder and, hey presto, you are extending the template! However, before nosotros do that nosotros need to get some of our ain components in that list!

4. Creating a Custom Lightning Component

*Whilst this isn't the most uncomplicated thing to practice, information technology'southward worth taking you through now. For those with a code allergy, I promise this won't be likewise taxing. Requite information technology a go!

The easiest way to create your "Hello World" lightning component is in the Salesforce Developer Console.

Open information technology upwardly, click File > New and Select New Lightning Component.

Give information technology a proper name and Description:

Phew, about there!

Here's the technical bit. A lightning component is a collection of files which work together to attain some specific functionality. What we are interested in here is purely the way information technology looks, and then we'll just exist alteration the component file, rather than the Controller, Helper etc… which are more than focused on the mode information technology behaves.

Update the component equally in the section as below, and just get out the other items in the right paw list empty.

To sympathise precisely what nosotros have done…

Nosotros've added some content: <h1>How-do-you-do World!</h1>
Nosotros've made it available to the Customs implements="forceCommunity:availableForAllPageTypes"

Save it, and that'due south it for creating the component. Now all nosotros demand to do is get and add it to our community.

5. Add your Hello Earth Component to the Community

Equally promised earlier, this pace is the easiest.

Navigate to the Community Builder and you'll run into your new custom Lightning Component.

Just click and drag onto the page and click Publish/Preview to see your pages. In this scenario I'll simply pop information technology right there under the welcome message.

Congratulations! You've just extended the Napili Template using a custom Lightning Component!

In determination…

Whilst we didn't quite build Rome in a 24-hour interval, I hope the in a higher place demonstrates the ease with which the Community Templates provided by Salesforce can be extended, and my promise is that it volition put you on that journey to building farther community experiences whilst leveraging the great starting points the templates provide.

Every bit a delivery caput, I've establish the real benefit in the Lightning Component & Community Template model to be the enabling of the delivery squad to focus on the functionality of the community they are delivering. Concerns such as UI and UX are often taken intendance of by the excellent templates, and tin can otherwise be managed or updated in parallel (or fifty-fifty equally business as usual changes) without impact to the underlying components.