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Full Actions & Recommendations entry
How-to guide

How to ship your first Actions and Recommendations deployment

A fresh Actions and Recommendations deployment takes about thirty minutes to wire up and another hour to populate with actions worth showing. The longest step is usually getting alignment from the service team on which seven actions belong at the top of the panel. Spend that time before you open Setup.

By Dipojjal Chakrabarti · Founder & Editor, Salesforce DictionaryLast updated May 18, 2026

A fresh Actions and Recommendations deployment takes about thirty minutes to wire up and another hour to populate with actions worth showing. The longest step is usually getting alignment from the service team on which seven actions belong at the top of the panel. Spend that time before you open Setup.

  1. Open Service Setup and find the feature

    Service Setup is one of the App Launcher apps. Search "Actions and Recommendations" in the Quick Find box and click into Deployments. The list shows every deployment in your org and the per-edition active deployment cap, which is fifty in most editions.

  2. Create the deployment record

    Click New. Give the deployment a name service agents will recognize in error messages, not a code name. Pick the channels: Case, Messaging Session, Voice Call, or all three. Pick the record types this deployment applies to.

  3. Add quick actions, macros, and flows in display order

    Drag actions from the available list into the deployment list. The order you set is the order agents see. Most teams settle on three actions visible without scrolling, with the rest folded into a More menu.

  4. Connect a Next Best Action strategy to the recommendation slot

    Open the Recommendations section of the deployment record. Pick the published NBA strategy. The strategy must exist and be active before it appears in the dropdown.

  5. Drop the Lightning component on the record page

    Open Lightning App Builder, edit the Case Record Page (or the equivalent for your channel), and drag the Actions and Recommendations component into a sidebar region. Save and activate the page.

  6. Assign permission sets to your agent group

    If you wired up the NBA slot, agents need the Einstein Next Best Action permission set. Flows in the panel need Run Flows. The Knowledge slot needs Read access on Knowledge.

  7. Test as an agent before announcing the change

    Log in as a test agent assigned the right profile and permission sets. Open a case that matches the deployment record type. Confirm the panel renders, the actions you ordered appear in that order, and at least one NBA recommendation surfaces.

Key options
Channelsremember

Which channel types the deployment serves: Case, Messaging Session, Voice Call, Chat, or Work Order. A single deployment can serve multiple channels.

Record typesremember

Which record types the deployment applies to within the chosen channels. Default is all record types if you skip this.

Recommendation strategyremember

The Next Best Action strategy that supplies the recommendation cards. Leave blank to hide the recommendations slot entirely.

Default expanded stateremember

Collapsed or Expanded. Messaging usually wants Collapsed, Voice usually wants Expanded, Case is a judgment call.

Folder groupingremember

Optional grouping of actions into labeled folders such as Triage, Resolution, Close. Useful when the panel exceeds seven items.

Gotchas
  • Empty panel almost always means no deployment is assigned to the current record type. Open Service Setup, search Actions and Recommendations, and check the deployment record types.
  • The NBA recommendation slot needs the Einstein Next Best Action license. Without it, the slot vanishes silently rather than showing an error.
  • Flow steps in the panel run as the agent, not as a system context. A flow that writes to a field the agent cannot edit fails without surfacing the failure.
  • Re-ordering actions on the deployment does not auto-publish the Lightning page. You must re-publish the page in App Builder for changes to land for end users.
  • Macros that send email through the panel bypass Email-to-Case routing rules. If your inbound flow relies on those rules, the macro path skips them.

See the full Actions & Recommendations entry

Actions & Recommendations includes the definition, worked example, deep dive, related terms, and a quiz.