Lightning Communities Developer Guide

Get Up to Speed with Lightning Communities
Develop Lightning Communities: The Basics
Customize the Look and Feel of a Lightning Template
Example: Build a Condensed Theme Layout Component
Develop Secure Code: Locker Service and Stricter CSP
Analyze and Improve Community Performance
Connect Your Community to Your Content Management System
Deploy a Community from Sandbox to Production
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Lightning Bolt for Salesforce: Build Once, Then Distribute and Reuse

Lightning Bolt for Salesforce lets you quickly and easily build an industry-specific Lightning Bolt Solution. Whether you use the solution in your own org or you’re a consulting partner or ISV, a Lightning Bolt Solution jump-starts new capabilities in a flash.
Available in: Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience
Available in: Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions

Time equals money

A Lightning Bolt Solution is a portable package packed with power. It combines custom Lightning apps, business process flows, and Lightning Community templates and pages in an easy-to-build and distributable form. Use a Lightning Bolt Solution to share or sell a solution on AppExchange, bootstrap a community with a turnkey solution or new look, or configure automation. You can publish apps or flows without a Lightning Community template or include one when you want to apply your brand.

A Lightning Bolt Solution combines one or more of the following.

  • Customized Lightning Community templates—A template includes a theme layout and CSS, along with pages, content layouts, and Lightning components. Instead of a full template, you can also export a single Community page with its content layout and components.
  • Flow categories—A flow category contains one or more flows, making it easy to group flows for related business processes.
  • Custom apps—Adding customized apps lets you create solutions tailored to your industry.

Lightning Bolt Solutions are flexible, so you can take advantage of them in many ways.

Example

You’ve customized the Partner Central template to create a community with features that meet your particular business needs. You want to create several similar partner communities, but you don’t want to build each one from scratch. By exporting your customized template, you can reuse it and build as many branded communities as you need.

Example

You’re a consulting partner who specializes in building solutions for the real estate industry. Your solutions feature a unique look, custom apps for finding mortgages, and automation that alerts sales people of properties with active prospects. With a Lightning Bolt Solution, you can create and export your solution in a way that’s easy to use. After you install your Lightning Bolt Solution in the customer’s org, you can further customize it to suit their needs. By building the bulk of the solution in your org and then distributing it to your customers, you can rapidly launch new solutions.

Example

You’re an ISV who builds a custom insurance agent app. The app includes automation to create coverage estimates and automatically notify customers of the results. Using a Lightning Bolt Solution, you can easily bundle your app and business process flows into a single package. Distribute the package to your customers to install in their Salesforce orgs, or market the solution on AppExchange.

Create a Lightning Bolt Solution

Including a Lightning Community template in your Lightning Bolt Solution is optional. To customize a template, select a base template and modify it using standard pages and components. Or, create your own custom pages, layouts, and components. After you finish customizing the template, export it or one of its pages from Community Settings | Developer. You can then package the template on its own or add it to a Lightning Bolt Solution.

Whether or not you include a template, you can add custom apps or flows to your solution. To include flows, first create a flow category, and add the active flows that you want to export.

Have at least one Lightning Community template, custom app, or flow category that you want to distribute? Then you’re ready to create a Lightning Bolt Solution.

  1. From Setup, enter Lightning Bolt Solutions in the Quick Find box, and select Lightning Bolt Solutions.
  2. On the Details and Branding page, enter information about your solution. For example, enter your company and solution names, and list the solution’s key features. Click Next.
  3. On the Solution Highlights page, add any combination of Community templates, flow categories, and custom apps. Click Next.
  4. Review the Summary page, and click Finish.

Reuse Your Own Solution

When you create a solution, it appears in the list of Lightning Bolt Solutions in your org. You can use it to build new communities or enhance an existing one.

New solutions appear in the list of Lightning Bolt Solutions.

Package and Distribute Your Solution

You can package and distribute solutions to use in other orgs and communities. After you create and upload a package, share the link privately with your clients, customers, or partners. Alternatively, publish your custom Lightning Bolt Solution as a managed package in AppExchange. Market your solution with an AppExchange listing in the same way that you list any other app, component, or consulting service. Describe your solution, pricing, support, and other details so that customers can determine whether your offering is right for them.

Add a Lightning Bolt Solution to a package