This is a case study commissioned by Salesforce. The full study, including a complete list of disclosures, can be found at http://www.salesforce.com/community-cloud-partner-infographic

Just recently, Salesforce presented Lightning Bolt Solutions – a number of community templates configured for various industries.

Now, we know all about the packaging and distribution features of Lightning Bolt Solutions. Moreover, we’re going to share the secret!

The anatomy of Lightning Bolt Solutions is simple and clear – Theme + Pages + Components = Lightning Bolt Template!

There are three steps to the Lightning Bolt lifecycle.

Step 1. Build It.

• Export – Lightning Community Builder allows you to develop a template and then export it with basic info (title, summary and preview images).
• Package – using the Salesforce packaging framework, a developer can create a new package or add the template to an existing one.

Step 2. Share It. In the very near future, it will be possible to publish your package on the AppExchange. For now, you can share a package installation link privately.

Step 3. Launch It.

3.1. Install. To make the Lightning Bolt Template available, simply install the package into a customer’s org. If it is a large company with many users and a large volume of data, do it into a sandbox first.

3.2. Publish. With the template and Community Creation Wizard create a new community and customise it with Community Builder.

What features are supported in packaging?

• Pages (Standard and Custom)
• Object Pages
• Components (Standard and Custom)
• Custom Themes
• Custom Objects
• Static Resources
• Login Pages
• Content Assets
• Branding
• Page Variations
• Navigation Menu, Custom CSS/Mark-up
• Community Settings

With Lightning Bolt Templates, it is easy to accelerate your development cycles and deliver solutions faster and with reduced times to market.

Thanks to Salesforce Winter ‘17 Release Notes, now we all have an amazing opportunity to customize our partner relationship management within your Salesforce org. Have you heard anything about the Lightning Partner Relationship Management which has recently been released by Salesforce? This is what we are going to test here today!

The Lightning Partner Management is a Salesforce package that you need to download and install like any other package from Appexchange. After you have installed it, you will find a new beautiful template among other community templates in your org.

Setup – All Communities – New Community – Lightning Partner Management Template.

Useful features for a vibrant Salesforce Partner Relationship Management

• • Partner Account Management

• • Partner recruitment and support

• • Lead distribution

• • Deal registration

• • Marketing development fund management

• • Campaign management

• Case integration

Salesforce Lightning Partner Marketplace Template contains custom objects, pages, components, business logic. There are also other features that are optimized for sales, marketing, and support processes.

On the Community Home page, you can see several preconfigured tabs with quick access to important business info. 

BUSINESS SUMMARY – allows to select a dashboard for displaying (Community Builder)

LEAD INBOX – allows to select an appropriate list view for Lead object

MY FEED – you can customize the size and type of publisher

MY GROUPS – list of your active groups that also can be customized

There is also the Register a Deal button on the Home page. Customize it in Community Builder to provide quick access to such important actions like New Lead, New Contact, New Task, New Fund Request, New Claim, etc.

This package also comes with 2 custom objects called Marketing Funds and Content. For best practices, we recommend to create two pages with this objects and add them to navigation menu at the top.

The Marketing Funds page has tabs with access to important components, quick action buttons, and analytics. Use Community Builder to customize headline, tabs, filters and components’ list view. You can quickly create a new Fund Request or a New Claim. 

The Content page displays a list of all files a user has access to. Click on the file name to preview it. You can see filters on the left panel – “Owned by me”, “Shared with me”, “Recent”, “Following”, “Libraries”. Users can quickly upload a new file on this page.

We hope this quick test of Salesforce Lightning Partner Management software will give you the idea of what you can present to your business partners and how you can improve your partner relationships. Even this quick test proves we have a new powerful tool from Salesforce that allows you to support your channel partners whenever they need it.