The problem
Recently, there has been a lot of interest in Salesforce from your senior management team. This is great news; executive buy-in can be a fantastic catalyst for increased user activity and adoption!
The downside is they’ve also realised the power of having data at their fingertips and they want to record lots more data in Salesforce. All the fields!!
Whilst you love their enthusiasm, you can picture the numerous complaints you’ll get from end users who already struggle with the page length and volume of fields.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could take some fields off the detail page and put them into a separate tab, or many tabs? The page length would be reduced and the navigation would be better; everyone loves tabs right?!
The solution
We can achieve this using object specific quick actions that are added to a tab on the Lightning record page.
For this tutorial, I’m going to use the Account object and separate my account addresses into tabs.
- Go to Setup > Object Manager > {Object Name} > Page Layouts
- Remove from the page layout any fields you want to add to separate tabs and save
- Navigate to Setup > Object Manager > {Object Name} > Buttons, Links & Actions > New Action
- Choose action type ‘Update a Record’, give it a name, a description and save
- Remove any fields you do not want to display (don’t worry about the record name i.e. Account Name having a red asterix)
- Add the fields you want on your new tab, then save
- A warning message will appear – select ‘Yes’
- Repeat the steps above to create actions for each new tab you need (for my example I have created a second ‘Update a Record’ action which contains the account shipping address)
- Navigate to your Lightning record page (Setup > Object Manager > {Object Name} > Lightning Record Pages) and select ‘Edit’
- Create and name your additional tabs:
- Select the tabs component by clicking on it
- On the right hand side, choose ‘Add Tab’
- Change the Tab Label to ‘Custom’
- Enter your own custom tab label and select ‘Done’
- Select your new tab by clicking on it
- From component menu (left), drag and drop a ‘Related Record’ component onto your new tab
- Update the component attributes menu (right)
- Enter a meaningful Header Label
- Lookup Field should be set to Use This {Object Name} i.e. Use This Account
- Choose your action from the Update Action list
- Repeat for any additional tabs
- Save, and if required, activate your page
The result
We now have separate tabs that display the account billing address and shipping address. The page length is reduced and the tabs improve navigation!
Gotchas & hints
*Custom tabs are not visible in the Salesforce mobile app!
*Fields that are subject to validation rules should not be moved into separate tabs. For example, if Billing Address is required for accounts and enforced by a validation rule, when my user tries to create a new account the billing field will not appear in the Create New screen (because it’s in another tab) but the validation rule is still enforced so my user cannot save.
* Suitable fields include: formula fields, image fields, fields filled by automation and fields that are not required or enforced.
*By moving fields into separate tabs you actually speed up page loading because tabs are only loaded when selected.
*‘Lightning Layouts’ is now on the road-map: ‘Lightning Layouts’ will enable you to create extremely dynamic page layouts that don’t have limitations like validation rules (see above). You can find more info here.
Useful links
Salesforce Help – Activate Lightning Experience Record Pages
The Everyday Admin 
This is extremely useful Christine. Thank you!
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Thanks Gustavo!
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This is useful for me,
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Just used this again, thank you Christine 🙂
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Thank you Leanne!! 😘
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Hi Christine, this is so helpful. Is there any limit on the number of fields we can add to “Update a Record” action? Thanks!
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When I add more than 8 fields the following message is being displayed:
Adding too many fields to an action layout can impact user efficiency. We recommend a maximum of 8 fields. To reduce the number of fields, you can set predefined values for fields that need a value, but won’t often be edited. You can safely remove those fields from the layout. Set predefined values from the action detail page.
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Very often actions are there to improve efficiency e.g. a quick action. So you don’t want a user to need to complete lots of fields. If you’re using the action to display formulas, roll ups etc then the number of fields doesn’t really matter.
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Just what I needed. Thanks Christine!
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Thank you Anna!
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Where would you start to look if users do not see the fields that were placed in the quick action but instead only see the required fields? For instance I have a tab for “Key Contacts” in the Account Object, when placed and I login under a different user it only shows me account name, account owner, and a few other fields that I have as required. Would it be a field permission setting?
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It sounds like a permission issue – I would check your field settings to see if users have visibility of these fields.
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Can you edit these tabs in Salesforce Mobile?
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The tabs would not be visible in the mobile app. Hopefully this will be possible with Dynamic Actions.
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What would be the cause of a user only seeing the same few fields in all the created tabs? I can see all the fields I added in but this user cannot. they have view all permission but still only see the same few fields in every single tab I created.
Thanks!
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