If you've tried it at all, you've probably noticed that the Salesforce mobile app acts significantly differently than interacting with the platform through a browser.
I have to admit that I've only used the mobile app infrequently and, as far as I can tell, few of my clients have used it at all. So I don't pay it much attention. There are some Salesforce admins out there, like Terry Cole, that have put a lot more thought into the mobile app and a lot more encouragement for their users to adopt it than I have.
But recently I had a client, Carol, that adopted the mobile app for herself. The main thing she wanted to do was upload a photo someone had texted to her to that person's Salesforce record. Seems like it should be [relatively] easy, right?
So Many Actions
Have you ever been working in the page layout editor and wondered about all the actions that show up in the "Salesforce Mobile and Lightning Experience Actions" section?
Half of those, I'm not even sure what they really do, or if they work. And others are irrelevant clutter in this context, such as Submit for Approval, when there is no approval process for the object I'm working on. Plus there are the redundant ones, like New Payment, that replicate the function you could just get using the New button on the Payments related list. You may have tested this and noticed that lots of these don't actually show up for users (or you) because they relate to features that aren't enabled, or the like.
Well I don't know about you, but that kind of clutter drives me crazy. It becomes hard to ensure that I've ordered the buttons in a useful way, not to mention that I haven't left on one or more that will confuse people So the first thing I do when I'm editing a page layout is to remove everything but the handful I actually want to display to users.
So here's the button setup for a custom object called Onboarding:
I removed a whole bunch that never get used and I've ordered the remainder in a way that generally makes sense for users:
Cancellation Checklist (This is a regularly used custom quick action that had been built before I worked with them.)
Change Owner (Onboarding owners are the people in charge of the record.)
Then we have three buttons that actually show together in the Activity feed, not the button bar: Email, New Task, and Log a Call
Printable View is rarely used, so I put it toward the end of the list.
Change Record Type probably shouldn't even be here, as this object has no record types. (Since it doesn't display, I've never noticed that I ought to remove it.)
Clone might sometimes be useful.
Edit is often needed and I usually put it first of second. (I'm just noticing that it's in the wrong place now! But I think users in this org tend to click on the pencil icons instead of the Edit button anyway.)
Post doesn't show up with the other actions, it displays in the Chatter publisher.
And finally we put Delete last on the list because it should be the least frequently used. (Often it will end up under a carat if there are a lot of buttons on the page.)
Here's what those result in when you're actually on a page:
Better for Users than Admins
Quick side note here: The final button order looks pretty good for users. (Though, as noted, I think Edit should be third and I'll probably make that change when I finish writing this post.)
But the order in the page layout editor as an admin is confusing, particularly due to those actions that don't display in the button bar (like Post) or, like Change Record Type, don't display at all because there are no record types. On my best days, I'll reorder everything so that those ones are grouped at the beginning or end, or take them out of the layout entirely to reduce clutter. But other times (like, apparently, in this case...), since I know which ones display in their own places, I just leave them where they fall. What can I say? Sometimes I'm lazy. 🤷🏻
No New Button on the Files Related List in Mobile
What my user, Carol, found was that even though she has no trouble uploading files to Onboardings in a browser using the Add File button in the related list, she wasn't able to figure out how to do it on mobile. The related list looked like this:
Notice that there's no New or Upload button.
When she asked me about it, I was confused too.
How I Solved It
It turns out that this is one of those situations that cleaning up the clutter created its own problem! The Files button that you probably see all the time in the page layout editor but doesn't show up when you view the page is actually what enables mobile uploads!
So I had to edit the onboarding page layout to have these options in the Salesforce Mobile and Lightning Experience Actions section:
See how I've added File second in the list?
Here's an Onboarding record in a browser now:
File does not appear there.
But if you pull up that same onboarding on your phone:
File is right there after Cancellation Checklist. So now it's possible to attach a photo from your phone to an Onboarding record.
What seems like "clutter" can sometimes serve a purpose.