Enterprise platforms such as Salesforce provide great flexibility, UI patterns, reusable components etc that solve most of the use cases. However, oftentimes, due to the way certain personas work, they need special UI elements that may not be part of the core repository of components present in Salesforce. A great example is a Gantt Chart for Project Managers. Salesforce is not perceived as a Project Management tool (on the average). Below is a great example of what we did for Researchers/Scientists who wear the role of Project Managers in Salesforce.
The problem statement in our context is that the scientists in the Pre-Clinical space often end up using on-prem or cloud-based Project Management tools which may not be the best option for regulated industries as the selection of tools impacts productivity and compliance. Therefore, their data, files, and attachments may be in one system while the project plans associated with their research end up in Microsoft Project or another SaaS-based platform impacting their productivity. In other to avoid this, we wanted the scientists to be able to define their projects and use Gantt Charts in Salesforce. To manage their projects efficiently, we researched the market and identified and implemented a Gantt Chart in the Salesforce platform as part of our LabPulse application so that researchers can get all their work done within LabPulse/Salesforce application.
Below is a screenshot of the application.
By leveraging the native activity/task capability in Salesforce and Bryntum’s Gantt Chart, we are able to improve usability and compliance. How did we arrive at the decision to use Bryntum? As mentioned before, we have been collaborating with them for many years. The quality of their product, support, and emphasis on usability made it an easy decision to go with their component.
Bryntum offers the LWC components to integrate the Gantt Chart into LabPulse. We leveraged their documentation and built the controllers and other integration components to tie in the native tasks with LabPulse. Our end-users (scientists) love the integration and the ease of use. We will continue to leverage the component for other use cases soon.
In a nutshell, while Gantt Chart is just one example of a component that is needed, we believe that there will be continued demand for similar components such as Schedulers, Data Grids, and Diagrams to be rendered well within the Salesforce ecosystem. If these components are designed well, usable, and perform well, the opportunity will be huge despite the fact that Salesforce will continue to enhance their native repository.