Canvas Developer Guide

Getting Started
Introducing Canvas
Quick Start
Quick Start—Advanced
Prerequisites
Clone the Project from GitHub
Run the Web App Locally
Create the Canvas App
Configure Who Can Access the Canvas App
Deploy the Web App to Heroku
Deploy the Canvas External Client App to an Org
Update the Canvas App
Package the Canvas App
Configure Who Can Access the Installed Canvas App
Using Canvas
Reference
PDF

Quick Start—Advanced

This advanced quick start shows you how to get started with more of the Canvas features. It takes you step-by-step through the process of creating, packaging, uploading, installing, and running a canvas app.

The sample canvas app is a “hello world” Web page that calls the Canvas SDK to display the current user’s name.

In this example, you:

  • Clone the “hello world” app from GitHub.
  • Run the app on a local Web server.
  • Expose the Web app as a canvas app in your Salesforce development org. You can either:
    • Use an external client app for your canvas app (recommended).
    • Use a connected app for your canvas app.

      In Spring ’26, the ability to create new connected apps is disabled by default. We recommend using external client apps for all new Canvas integrations. To enable creation of new connected apps, contact Salesforce Customer Support.

      Note

  • Test the app in the Canvas App Previewer.
  • Deploy the Web app to Heroku.
  • Package and upload the canvas app.
  • Install the canvas app in another Salesforce org and run it as a user would.

The steps in this quick start assume you’re using Windows. You can use another OS, but there might be some minor differences in the steps.