Why Design Tailored Dynamic Forms?
Salesforce Lightning Dynamic Forms offer unparalleled flexibility in delivering a tailored user experience by allowing different personas to access relevant information at each stage of a business process. Unlike standard Page Layouts, which display the same information to all users, Lightning Pages allow for dynamic and role-specific views.
For objects with lifecycle stages—like Opportunities or Cases—this capability is invaluable. As records move through their lifecycle, the information and actions relevant to users will change. For instance, in the Opportunity object, different fields and actions become relevant when transitioning from 'Prospecting' to 'Negotiation' or 'Closed Won'.
Without a thoughtful approach to designing Lightning Pages, teams experience cluttered, inefficient layouts, leading to frustration, reduced productivity, and data errors.
When to Design and Use Dynamic Forms
Moving from page layouts to dynamic forms takes effort and realistically you will not have the time to migrate all pages for all objects. But the power of dynamic forms is still extremely valuable and worth pursuing. Therefore consider prioritizing your efforts on following scenarios:
Transitory Objects: Objects like Opportunities, Cases, or custom objects that move through distinct stages of a lifecycle benefit the most. Different data points and actions become relevant at each stage.
User Experience Issues: If end users report frustration with the usability and intuitiveness of the Salesforce UI, this is a clear signal to revisit your Lightning Page design. A well-designed Lightning Page improves the user experience by surfacing only the most relevant information and actions at any given time.
Prerequisites
In order to follow this guide you need:
Salesforce Metadata Management product license
Process-led-change product license
Synced Salesforce Org into Metadata Dictionary
Design and build a lovable, lean, lightning user experience
Step 1: Identify Opportunities for Lightning Pages
Before diving into page design, identify objects that would benefit from Dynamic Forms the most. Use the Custom View of Metadata in your Salesforce Metadata Dictionary to create a list of Standard and Custom objects with key metrics such as:
Name
API name
Description
Record counts
Last created record date
Last modified record date
Number of page layouts
Number of fields
Focus on complex (lot of fields, lot of page layouts), high-usage objects (lot of records, used recently) as prime candidates for dynamic page designs. Sort the objects by number of custom fields, from highest to lowest, to identify those with largest data inputs.
You can bulk-select those objects and create a separate story per each one, with one click, to build lightning dynamic pages for them.
Step 2: Use UPN to Design the Business Process and Employee Journey
Once you’ve identified candidate objects, map out their business process using Universal Process Notation (UPN). This will help you visualize the key stages of an object's lifecycle and determine the data and actions required at each point.
Universal Process Notation (UPN) is a straightforward yet robust diagramming technique used to capture a wide range of workflows. The foundation of UPN lies in its simplicity: a single type of building block that represents an activity, augmented by flowlines indicating sequence and connections between steps. Each block in a UPN diagram answers the key questions that define an activity within a flow:
What? (the activity itself)
When? (the timing or sequence)
Who? (the responsible party)
With what? (the resources or tools used)
Why? (the outcome or purpose)
The focus on capturing verifiable outcomes sets UPN apart, ensuring that each step within a process is purposeful and measurable.
To learn the full notation and best practices with Universal Process Notation, read this guide.
Step 3: Analyze UPN diagram to Identify Stage-Specific Data Needs
If you have followed the UPN notation, you should have a detailed business process diagram that articulates:
Each lifecycle stage (e.g., "Opportunity - Prospecting," "Opportunity - Negotiation").
Identifies who is involved, what actions are needed, and what resources are required at each stage
Take a look at the example provided below. If you analyze the provided UPN diagram with clearly articulated distinct, unique, and verifiable outcomes, you can understand what information and actions are required at each stage of the record's lifecycle.
You can create a matrix, like the one below, to capture what data (fields) and what actions (screen flows, buttons etc.) are needed at what stage. And which are no longer relevant.
That is fundamentally your lightning dynamic page set of condition requirements!
Step 4: Build the Lightning Page
With clear requirements in mind, use Salesforce's Lightning App Builder to construct the page:
Dynamic Components: Leverage component visibility rules to show or hide fields and actions based on the record’s stage or the user’s role.
Streamlined Layouts: Create layouts that are as lean as possible—use tabs, accordions, or conditional display logic to keep irrelevant information hidden unless necessary.
Visibility Rules: Tailor what each user sees by setting visibility based on profile, role, or record data (e.g., stage of the Opportunity).
For BEST user experience, aim to have no more than 7 fields on a page at any given time!
The result should be a dynamic page that changes displayed information and even related lists depending on type, stage, status, or role, or other attributes of the record.
By doing this, you create a dynamic, user-friendly page experience that adapts to the user's specific role and the lifecycle stage.
Step 5: Update dynamic forms using instant insight into dynamic rules
Over time end-users will have additional requests regarding what information is displayed and when. There might also be some configuration issues that need to be addresses from time to time.
While dynamic forms, due to the conditional logic, are generally harder to change and maintain than page layouts, Elements provides you with dependency insights that make troubleshooting a breeze.
When you inspect the dependency tab in the right panel for the selected lightning page, inspect the 'Uses' section. It lists all custom values (picklist values), fields, profiles, roles, reports, flows and other actions being used by the lightning page.
When you roll over a given component, you can see in the description how a component is used on a dynamic page. You can spot if it is used as a filter / condition and if so, on which lightning components.
This allows you to quickly pinpoint problems and resolve them without delving into deeper dependency assessments.