What this book covers

Chapter 1, Core Capabilities of the Lightning Platform, covers the Lightning Platform schema and core standard objects, looking at the boundaries of declarative app building compared to building apps programmatically, and describes the Salesforce AppExchange.

Chapter 2, Designing and Building a Data Model, explains how to design and build an appropriate data model and looks at field data types, relationship fields, and the impact of changing field type, along with a detailed look at the capabilities of Schema Builder.

Chapter 3, Importing and Exporting Data, looks at the utilities and features for importing and exporting data and describes how, with the use of external objects, data that does not reside in the Lightning Platform can be accessed within the platform.

Chapter 4, Securing Access to Data, shows you how to restrict and extend access to objects, fields, and records, and helps you to understand how, through the use of object-level permissions, organization-wide sharing defaults, and other sharing settings, appropriate access to records can be configured.

Chapter 5, Setting Up the User Interface, covers the declarative options to customize the Salesforce Lightning Experience user interface, where you will be shown how to configure and build functionality for custom buttons, links, and actions, as well as providing guidance for designing an appropriate user interface for a given scenario.

Chapter 6, Implementing Business Logic, describes how record types, formula fields, roll-up summary fields, and validation rules facilitate the control and presentation of values and the validation of business logic.

Chapter 7, Building Business Process Automation, looks at the features and capabilities for automating processes for given business requirements using workflow rules, Process Builder, and Flow, and how approval processes can be configured to automate the process of approving or rejecting records.

Chapter 8, Generating Data Analytics with Reports and Dashboards, describes how to use the analytics features to create reports and dashboards and how standard reports can be built, as well as how to configure custom report types to allow standard report templates to be extended.

Chapter 9, Configuring the Mobile Features, shows you how the declarative features can be used to customize mobile apps and set the mobile user interface, along with the configuration of global and object-specific actions.

Chapter 10, Understanding the Social Features, shows you how the capabilities of the social networking features can be configured to satisfy various use cases for linking Lightning Platform records with social network profiles.

Chapter 11, Managing the App Building Process, covers application life cycle management and describes Salesforce environments, sandboxes, and how to use change sets and unmanaged packages to deploy changes.

Chapter 12, Studying for the Certified Platform App Builder Exam, describes the certified Platform App Builder exam and looks at resources, including training courses and Trailhead, that are available to prepare for the exam and offers insight into the types of questions, along with suggested approaches for planning, booking, and taking the exam.