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What Is the Salesforce Lightning Inspector, and How Does It Work?

Salesforce is a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) platform that allows businesses to manage their customer data and interactions. Salesforce has a range of features, tools, and integrations that help businesses increase their productivity, improve the customer experience, and drive revenue growth

Salesforce Lightning Inspector is a helpful tool that allows developers to troubleshoot and debug their Salesforce Lightning components and applications. But as with most enterprise software solutions, there’s a steep learning curve. If you don’t have the time or resources to pursue relevant Salesforce certifications or other Salesforce training options, you risk misconfigurations and other errors that could be detrimental to your business.   

In this post, we’ll explore what the Salesforce Lightning Inspector is, how it works, and how to overcome the challenges it poses to users.

 

What is the Salesforce Lightning Inspector? 

Salesforce Lightning is a solution that helps developers – and even business users – build responsive, modern web applications for Salesforce. The Salesforce Lightning Inspector is a tool that helps developers debug and troubleshoot their Salesforce Lightning applications. 

The Lightning Inspector allows developers to inspect the components, events, and data in their Lightning applications in real time. It also provides developers with a detailed view of their application’s structure and helps them to identify and fix bugs quickly.

Developers use this tool for: 

  • Real-time debugging: The Salesforce Lightning Inspector allows developers to debug and troubleshoot their Lightning applications in real time, which makes it easy to fix issues as they come up.
  • Comprehensive views: With the Lightning Inspector, developers can get a comprehensive view of their Lightning components and events, including their structure, data, and interactions—all in one place.
  • Performance optimization: The Performance tab in the Lightning Inspector provides developers with valuable information about their application’s performance. This helps developers optimize their Lightning components and improve their application’s speed and responsiveness.
  • Better collaboration: The Lightning Inspector can help developers work more effectively with project stakeholders by providing a clear view of the application’s structure and behavior. This can help everyone better understand the application and work together more efficiently.
  • Improved quality: By providing developers with a powerful tool for debugging and troubleshooting their applications, the Lightning Inspector can help businesses improve the overall quality and reliability of their Salesforce applications. This creates a better customer experience and, as a result, increases revenue.

 

How does Salesforce Lightning Inspector work? 

Salesforce Lightning Inspector is a browser extension that works with Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. Developers install the extension to access the Lightning Inspector from within the Salesforce Lightning Experience by opening a Lightning page and clicking the Lightning Inspector icon in the browser’s toolbar.

The Lightning Inspector opens in a new tab and displays a panel with several tabs that allow developers to view and interact with their Lightning components.

The Lightning Inspector consists of several tabs with different features:

  • The Components tab displays a tree view of the Lightning components on the current page. Developers can expand and collapse the tree to view the components’ attributes and data. 
  • The Events tab displays a list of events that are fired by the components on the current page. This is where developers can view the event’s data and the components that trigger the event. 
  • The Performance tab displays a waterfall chart that shows how much time each component takes to render on the page. Developers can use this tab to identify components that are causing performance issues.
  • If your app delivers transaction markers, the Transaction tab will display these metrics. 
  • The Actions tab displays all server-side actions executed for the app. It automatically updates whenever the page updates, too.
  • The Storage tab displays storage data on an application, which developers can check to understand storage in Lightning Experience and the Salesforce app.

 

Salesforce Lightning Inspector Challenges

While the Salesforce Lightning Inspector is a powerful tool that can help developers improve the quality of their Lightning applications, it poses some challenges, including: 

  • Browser compatibility: The Salesforce Lightning Inspector is a browser extension that works with Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. However, other browsers, such as Safari, aren’t compatible. 
  • Limited functionality: The Lightning Inspector provides developers with a limited set of functionalities. Developers who need more advanced debugging and profiling tools might need to use third-party tools, or Salesforce’s developer console.
  • Steep learning curve: If you’re not already familiar with Salesforce Lightning components, it can be difficult to use Salesforce Lightning Inspector. Developers who are new to Salesforce might need to invest some time to learn how to use the Lightning Inspector effectively.
  • Time-consuming debugging: Debugging Salesforce Lightning applications can be time-consuming, especially if the application has many components and events. Developers often need to spend a lot of time identifying and fixing bugs.

 

As helpful as Salesforce Lightning Inspector is, it isn’t without its challenges. To overcome these challenges, users may need to invest in third-party tools or engage with an experienced Salesforce consultant like Argano. Contact us today to learn how we can help you simplify Salesforce development, integration, migration, and customization.