Recommendations, Limitations, and Considerations

Recommendations

With this release, offline use is supported. However, while supported, there are significant differences between the offline and online experience, with some specific features that require online access for correct behavior. We outline these differences in the “Considerations and Limitations” section of the Mobile Offline Developer Guide, which is essential reading for success with this program.

We recommend that you develop while online, and test online and offline behavior. For “in the field” testing, we recommend you limit participation to features or users where the limitations of early access software are understood and don’t compromise your business functions.

Limitations

Salesforce Mobile App Plus separates features with two different modes: Standard and Offline.

• In Standard mode, you can continue to use all of the existing features of the Salesforce Mobile App (with a couple of exceptions), but it isn’t optimized for offline use.
• In Offline mode, the app is optimized for using LWCs both online and offline

Switching between the two modes is easily done with a few taps, but it does take a bit of time to transition.

General Considerations

• The Lightning Web Components framework includes a wide range of built-in components, a number of modules that enable features, and a range of wire adapters for data access. The implementation currently available in the Salesforce App Plus mobile app supports a subset of these features. See additional details in the Mobile Offline Developer Guide.
• Mobile Offline supports only Lightning web components. Aura components and Visualforce aren’t merely unsupported, they’re unavailable when in Offline mode. Mobile Offline is a programmatic (JavaScript), “pro code” feature.
• Mobile Offline is available only within the Salesforce Mobile App for orgs that license Salesforce Mobile App Plus. Offline-specific features rely on platform-native implementations that are available only within an offline-enabled mobile app, such as Salesforce Mobile App Plus. They don’t work in a web browser, whether on a mobile or desktop device.
  • To ensure desktop users don’t have access to mobile-only features, add configurations.

Offline Considerations

Note Salesforce Mobile App Plus and Lightning Web Components don’t have a supported mechanism for detecting whether a device is online or not. Online vs. offline connectivity is dynamic, and the signal given to the app from the mobile operating system is notoriously unreliable because the state of connectivity can change frequently. In general, our design goal is that LWCs work offline first, and treat being offline as a normal condition, not a failure. We recommend your components adhere to this practice.

The Salesforce Mobile App uses a simple, automatic approach to preloading, or priming, data for offline use, and has only basic offline capabilities. When you switch to Offline mode with Salesforce Mobile App Plus, you get greater offline capabilities. You define your own priming strategy using Briefcase Builder and create briefcase definitions that match the needs of your mobile users.

Separate from the data priming strategy, Mobile Offline also primes essential metadata. This metadata includes details like custom object and field definitions, page layouts, quick actions, and other “standard” Salesforce metadata. It also includes the LWC code required for your Mobile Offline apps to run.

The mobile app doesn’t have detailed knowledge about your custom features built with Lightning web components. Instead, the app analyzes your custom objects, page layouts, components, and other metadata, and then loads the data and metadata it thinks you need. To improve the quality of this analysis, and thus the performance of your components, follow relevant guidelines when developing your Lightning web components. These guidelines are covered in the Mobile Offline Developer Guide.

If Background Priming (beta) is enabled, you can use your mobile device for other tasks, like making a call or viewing your calendar, while records are being downloaded. How soon your records start downloading depends on your operating system; Android devices begin downloading records right away, but iOS devices delay the download start time. To participate in this beta program, contact your customer success representative or account executive.

Note This feature is a Beta Service. Customer may opt to try such Beta Service in its sole discretion. Any use of the Beta Service is subject to the applicable Beta Services Terms provided at Agreements and Terms.