In-App Guidance
In-App Guidance is a Salesforce feature that displays contextual help, announcements, and step-by-step walkthroughs directly inside Lightning Experience, so users learn in the moment without leaving the app.
Definition
In-App Guidance is a Salesforce feature that displays contextual help, announcements, and step-by-step walkthroughs directly inside Lightning Experience, so users learn in the moment without leaving the app. Admins build it in Setup under In-App Guidance, then target prompts and walkthroughs at specific Lightning pages and audiences chosen by profile or permission set.
The feature comes in two building blocks. Prompts are single messages that appear once or on a schedule, and walkthroughs chain several prompts into a guided tour. Both can carry rich text, images, and links, and docked prompts can embed video. The goal is feature adoption: people are far more likely to read help that sits inside the screen they are already using than help that lives on a separate site.
How In-App Guidance is built and delivered
Prompts versus walkthroughs
In-App Guidance has two units. A prompt is a single message tied to one Lightning page. A walkthrough is an ordered set of prompts that move the user through a process one step at a time. You reach for a prompt when a single announcement does the job, like telling reps that a new field exists on the Opportunity. You reach for a walkthrough when the task has several stages, like showing a service agent how to log a call from start to finish. A walkthrough can hold up to 10 prompts in sequence, though Salesforce recommends keeping it to about 5 so people do not lose patience. Each step shows a progress indicator such as Step 1 out of 4, and a Next button advances the tour. The final step replaces Next with a Finish button, and can offer an action link instead of a button. Walkthrough steps can cross pages, so a tour can start on a list view and continue on a record page. If a step points at a component that is not present on the page a user is viewing, that step is skipped, which is why testing on real records matters.
The three prompt types
Prompts come in three shapes, and the shape decides how much attention the message demands. A floating prompt is a small card that you place in one of nine positions on the page. It is good for a quick tip the user can read and dismiss, and it disappears when the user leaves the page. A targeted prompt is tied to a specific element, such as a field on a record page or in a dynamic form. It draws an arrow at that element and grays out the rest of the page, with up to 12 positions relative to the target or auto-placement by Salesforce. Use it when you need to call attention to one exact spot. A docked prompt is the largest type. It stays pinned to a corner of the page, and the user can minimize and maximize it rather than dismissing it. Docked prompts support extended formatting, lists, links, and embedded video from YouTube, Vidyard, or Vimeo, so they suit longer explanations. One trade-off: docked prompts have no optional dismiss button, so plan their display schedule carefully. Floating and targeted prompts include a snooze icon and an optional dismiss button.
Targeting the right audience
Every prompt and walkthrough is aimed at a Lightning page and an audience. Supported pages include object record pages, object home pages, and the New, Edit, and Clone record pages. A split-view Task record page routes to the Task home page instead, which is a quirk worth remembering. Audience filters let the same page show different guidance to different people. You can scope an item to a combination of profiles and permission sets, up to 10 combined per item. You can also filter on user attributes, so a prompt can target only recently created users, which is a common pattern for onboarding new hires. This granularity keeps guidance relevant. A sales-only prompt should never reach service agents, because every irrelevant card trains users to ignore the next one. Display frequency is also controllable: you can show the same guidance up to 30 times, with up to 30 days between appearances, so a message can resurface without becoming nagging.
Where it runs, and where it does not
In-App Guidance is a Lightning Experience feature. It does not appear in Salesforce Classic, and it is not supported in the Salesforce mobile app, so design your guidance for desktop browser sessions. This is a frequent point of confusion, because adoption tooling often spans devices, but native In-App Guidance does not reach mobile. Experience Cloud sites can use In-App Guidance with limits. Support there is restricted to Aura-based templates, and site walkthroughs require the Enablement add-on along with the appropriate Partner Relationship Management licensing. So a partner community built on an Aura template can show guidance to external users, while a site on a newer LWR template cannot. When you plan a guidance program, confirm the surface first. Lightning Experience desktop is the primary home, Experience Cloud Aura sites are a secondary option, and mobile and Classic are out of scope. Knowing this up front avoids building a tour that a chunk of your audience will never see.
Licenses, limits, and editions
In-App Guidance is available across most editions, from Group and Professional up through Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer. The free tier is capped: an org can have up to 3 active walkthroughs in Lightning Experience without buying more. The Enablement add-on (bundled with offerings such as Einstein 1 Sales) lifts the active limits so larger programs can run many concurrent tours. There are also creation ceilings independent of how many are active. You can create up to 500 prompts and up to 500 walkthroughs in an org. Items installed from AppExchange packages are not hard-capped today, though Salesforce notes a limit could arrive in a future release and suggests staying near 500. Media has limits too. Uploaded images max out at 324 by 132 pixels for above or below placement, or 148 by 148 pixels for side placement, with a 5 MB file size cap, and animated PNG files are not supported. Video is available only in docked prompts. Plan your content within these bounds before you start authoring.
Measuring and iterating on guidance
In-App Guidance is most useful when you treat it as an ongoing program rather than a one-time setup. The Setup node lists every prompt and walkthrough you have built, and Salesforce surfaces engagement data so you can see what is working. Reviewing which prompts get dismissed quickly and which drive action button clicks tells you where copy is too long, where timing is off, and where placement misses. Strong customer success teams keep a rolling backlog of guidance ideas, each tied to a real signal such as a support ticket trend or direct user feedback. They ship a prompt, watch the numbers, then shorten, retarget, or retire it. A prompt that no one reads is worse than none, because it adds noise. The localization angle matters in global orgs too: Translation Workbench supports translated text, but for images it supports only images added by URL, not uploaded files, so reference hosted images when you need multilingual guidance.
Native In-App Guidance versus third-party adoption tools
Vendors like WalkMe, Pendo, and Whatfix offer digital adoption platforms that overlap with In-App Guidance. They typically provide richer authoring, more flexible targeting, deeper analytics, and guidance that spans multiple applications, so a single tour can move a user across Salesforce, Slack, and an email client. That cross-app reach is something native In-App Guidance does not do. The trade-off is cost and scope. Native In-App Guidance ships with Lightning Experience and covers Salesforce-only flows at no extra license cost beyond the active-walkthrough limits. The third-party platforms are paid products that often justify their price in large or complex orgs. Many enterprises run both: native guidance for in-Salesforce moments where it is free and good enough, and a dedicated adoption platform for cross-application onboarding or when they need analytics the native tool does not provide. Start with native guidance, prove the value with engagement data, and add a platform only when a real gap appears.
How to create In-App Guidance
Create a single prompt in Setup, then optionally chain prompts into a walkthrough. You need the Customize Application and Modify All Data permissions. Build on a desktop browser, because In-App Guidance does not render in the Salesforce mobile app.
- Open the In-App Guidance node
In Setup, enter In-App Guidance in Quick Find and select it. The page lists existing prompts and walkthroughs with their status. Click Add to start a new item.
- Pick the page and prompt type
Choose the Lightning page where the guidance should appear (a record page, object home page, or New/Edit/Clone page). Select floating, targeted, or docked. For a targeted prompt, click the exact element the arrow should point to.
- Write the content
Add the title and rich-text body. Attach an image within the size limits if needed, and for a docked prompt embed a YouTube, Vidyard, or Vimeo video. Set the action button label and URL, or leave the dismiss and snooze options as the only controls.
- Set audience and schedule
Filter the audience by profiles and permission sets (up to 10 combined) and by user attributes such as created date. Choose how many times the guidance shows and the gap between appearances, up to 30 times across up to 30 days.
- Activate, or chain into a walkthrough
Test the prompt on a real record, then activate it. To build a tour, create a walkthrough and add prompts in order, up to 10 steps. Keep it near 5 steps, then activate within the 3 free active walkthroughs unless you have the Enablement add-on.
The Lightning page where the prompt appears, such as an object record page, object home page, or New, Edit, or Clone page.
Floating, targeted, or docked. Targeted prompts also require selecting the on-page element to anchor to.
The headline and rich-text message users read. Keep it short so the card is read, not dismissed.
The profiles, permission sets, or user attributes that decide who sees the guidance.
- In-App Guidance does not work in the Salesforce mobile app or in Classic, so mobile-heavy audiences will not see it.
- A walkthrough step that points at a component missing from the page is silently skipped, which can break the flow. Test on real records first.
- The free tier allows only 3 active walkthroughs in Lightning Experience; you need the Enablement add-on for more.
- Docked prompts have no dismiss button, so a poorly scheduled docked prompt can feel intrusive. Set the display frequency deliberately.
Prefer this walkthrough as its own page? How to In-App Guidance in Salesforce, step by step
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on In-App Guidance.
- In-App GuidanceSalesforce
- Limits for In-App GuidanceSalesforce
Hands-on resources to go deeper on In-App Guidance.
About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He runs salesforcedictionary.com to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
Test your knowledge
Q1. What two formats does In-App Guidance offer?
Q2. How can an admin target a specific In-App Guidance prompt to only new hires?
Q3. Which metric does In-App Guidance record for each prompt to show whether it is working?
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