About Custom Actions

Object-specific custom actions are Visualforce pages or canvas apps that let users interact with or create records that have a relationship to an object record. The Visualforce page for an object-specific custom action must include the standard controller for the relevant object. For example, to create a custom action that lets users import a contact’s Twitter profile and add that information to a contact record, you need to use the standard contact controller.

Use a Visualforce page or a canvas app to create a global custom action for tasks that don’t require users to interact with or create records that have a relationship to a specific object. Canvas apps that you want to use as custom actions need to use Publisher as a location. Visualforce pages that you want to use as global custom actions can’t use standard controllers. For example, if you want to create a custom action that lets users enter a street address and see a map, the local time, and the local weather, create a Visualforce page that doesn’t use any of the standard controllers, and add it as a custom global action.

We can’t create custom actions with point-and-click, so we won’t be working with them in our administrator exercises. If you want to find out more about custom actions, see Adding Functionality with Visualforce Custom Actions.