OK, it's time. I need to learn about the Console and set it up. I started this back a few years ago in the Classic Console after it became free, but I gave up. Now since the shiney new Lightning Console is half decent, let's have another go. 

I was waiting to have a real-life-complex client to test it out on, because you need to see it in action to see what bits you need on it. 

Nope, I haven't looked at lightning yet, so this is Console with Classic. 

Contents

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Why? Because you can! Because Console is now free - you get one Console included. So choose wisely as to how the Console will be set up. And Lightning Console is pretty good. 

Console works best with views that you need to action things on - eg Cases. But views are powerful - see Action Views, Tasks and Report Alerts and you will find some ideas of which views to have in the Console. And the list views in Console are dynamically updating - so that means if you have an Action view, and you do something with a record in that view that takes it off the Action view, it will be automatically taken off the view. 

Resources

As always, start with Trailhead

Help Documentation 

Implementation Guide

Video for setup

Video for navigation

Differences between Classic and Lightning Console

Articles

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• Contacts (no Accounts because of NPSP and mainly dealing with individuals)
• Cases - as a subtab of Contacts
• Opportunities - as a subtab of Contacts
• And 3 or so Custom Objects - as a subtab of Contacts

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Set Up Console

Tabs

Aka Primary Tab

• has a highlights panel

Subtabs

Records can open as a Subtab of another record

• Related to records on the primary tab

Lists

Lists can be:

• Full Screen
• Top
• Left side - with a width specified

Opening a record from a list will open a series of tabs. 

Lists are dynamic

Bookmarks

Oh wow! How come I did not know about bookmarks earlier! This will be cool! 

Bits I won't use

• External Web Pages

Setup

Pre-Setup

First step - before you do anything, set up Feed Layouts for the main layouts that will be in your Console. For me that's Contacts and Cases (see Case Feeds). You do not want a page long feed to be cluttering up your Console layout. 

Next - clean up your views! 

• Get rid of any unecessary views
• Create useful views
• I like having Record Type as my first field in the view - but that doesn't work for the skinny list views - so make the name the first column.

Setup

Pre-Setup

Work out exactly what pages are going to be in here. 

Work out which pages will be used only in Console or in both Console and regular apps. 

Permissions

Thanks to Christian Carter's post above - he reminds us to create Permission Sets for users. NOTE: Do not create the Permission Set with Salesforce licence access - the required permission - Sales Console will not be available - yes, confusing, I know). 

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NOTE: Agent Console is not what you want - that is the old old old ConsoleImage Removed

Create > Apps > New > Choose Console. 

Name it and add a logo. 

Choose the objectsImage Removed

These are the objects that will appear in the drop down list in the Console.

Choose how they will openImage Removed

This is what I chose - note Account is not noted, because I'm mainly doing Individuals with NPSP

Choose which profiles should see this Console. 

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Now switch to the console and think Ugh, that's ugly! and start changing things. 

The first thing I changed is the order of objects - I want to focus on Contacts first 

To edit go to Create > Apps > Choose the App from the list. 

Other Modifications

I set the Header colour to match the logo

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History is going to be really useful, and as I noted, this client has Knowledge. 

I set the lists to open in the left hand panel and with 25% width - note refresh the whole browser window to refresh any changes made to tabs. This took me a while to work out. 

Other things

• Push Notifications
• Tab Hovers
• Tab Limits
• Page and List refreshes
• Tab Hovers
• Tab Limits - I think this is important if you don't have a good internet connection or fast computer. 

Views

The most important thing is to set up ALL your views to look good in the Console - look at ALL of them. 

Page Layouts

Each Page layout needs attention. 

• Set the highlights panel
• Set the Layout Options to show Highlights Panel
  • Note, when you add the Highlights Panel you need to close and re-open the record with that layout for it to show. 

Interaction Log

As I am trying to get away from the use of Activities and towards the Feed (see Tasks, Activities, Notes & Attachments), I will NOT be using the Interaction Log. Plus it's ugly. 

Feed View Options

These are extra options for the console over and above the settings on Feed Layouts

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I can't work out what these do. 

Image Removed

For Console I would choose to uncheck Automatically Collapse Publisher Layout. 

Choose Placement

This is so annoying. I don't want the following icon on the right or the left, I want it somewhere useful, but it looks ridiculous on the left. So put Following Icon and Followers List on the right. 

Since buttons and custom links appear on the detail page there is not much point putting them here - but up to you. See Feed Layouts for issues wiht Buttons though. 

Hide Sidebar

Don't check it - it makes no difference in console, but will stuff things up when you are out of Console. 

Custom Console Components

Start with Sandy's post on Custom Console Components. 

• Here is my tip - take all related lists OFF the bottom of the page layouts and stick them ALL in an Accordion on the right hand side - grouped into meaningful groups - eg Activity History, Contact History together in History.
  • Note you can only have 5 Accordion groups
  • They say don't have more than 4 or it will affect performance.

Weird Things

• The hover in history is the Mini page layout view. The hover in the list view is the same fields as on the list view. 
  • This is becuase when the list view is narrow you need to hover to see all the fields.
• If you have the bookmarks list open, it changes the name of the bookmarked record based on what is open.  
• The Following Icon is removed from the list views if you remove it from the Feed View options on the page layout - that is weird. 
• Quick Actions just LOOK WIERD!

Things to Note

• When the list view is at the side, you can't then sort on columns - that is maybe a very good reason to not use list views at the side. 
• List views at the side - you need to be very careful about which fields you put first int he view - it looks like 5 fields will show. 
  • But you can widen them if you have a wide enough monitor 

Clean up your views! 

• Get rid of any unecessary views
• Create useful views
• I like having Record Type as my first field in the view - but that doesn't work for the Split View - so make the Name the first column.
• Ensure the first 4 columns of each view are consistent and meaningful. 

Page Layouts and Lightning Pages

Each Page Layout and Lightning Page needs attention. 

There are specific Contsole Lightning Page Layouts with Pinned Regions, but I don't like them. Pinned Regions and the split view makes the page scroll left and right. Regular pages just resize their content. 

I don't want pages that look different in Console to regular Salesforce, unless there is a very good reason. 

Things I want to change

• Enable views to ONLY show up in the Console - so they are nice views that will look good with the Console
• Don't call the primary tab Details - you get lost! 
• Enable object to be opened as Sub Tabs, but not appear in the drop down list of objects. 
• I would like views to be able to be pinned. 
• More fields in a list view Split View would be good now. 
• I want the FEED in place of the Interaction Log
• I want Customised Feed Filters! Now! 
• I want the feed to appear in a custom console layout section OR in a tab - not just the little icons on the top right of the page. 

Help Notes

Things to make sure I tell my client's users about

• List views
• History
• Bookmarks
• Hovers
• Close all Tabs
• Tab pinning

Weird things

• Clicking on the row doesn't open you need to click on the name
• But if you click on a related object name, you will open that 
• The Highlights Panel disappears very easily. 

Not sure about

• Pop out primary tabs

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Help Notes

Keyboard Shortcuts

• shift+x to quickly close each tab

List Management

• Switch between Table View and Split View to quickly see more data or individual records.
• Kanban view might be useful for some things
• When you are working in split view and need to change the order, you need to switch to Tab View first
• If you want to edit fields directly in the grid you need to be in Tab View
• Use the little triangle to close and open the Split View.

Tab Management

• Tabs that are open stay open the next time you open Salesforce, so they stay open until you close them.
• Pin Tabs to keep Tabs you want to refer to all the time
• Favorite a tab to get back to it in two clicks (eg Favorite reports).