Standard Actions and Overrides Basics

There are six standard actions available on most standard and all custom objects: Tab, List, View, Edit, New, and Delete. In Salesforce Classic, these are all distinct actions.

Lightning Experience and Salesforce1 combine the Tab and List actions into one action, Object Home. However, Object Home is reached via the Tab action in Lightning Experience, and the List action in Salesforce1. In this release, you can only override the Tab action with a Lightning component, so you can’t use a component to override the List action for Salesforce1. Finally, Salesforce1 has a unique Search action (reached via Tab). (Yes, it’s a bit awkward and complicated.)

This table lists the standard actions you can override for an object as the actions are named in Setup, and the resulting action that’s overridden in the three different user experiences.
Override in Setup Salesforce Classic Lightning Experience Saleforce1
Tab object tab object home search
List object list n/a object home
View record view record home record home
Edit record edit record edit record edit
New record create record create record create
Delete record delete record delete record delete
Note

Note

  • “n/a” doesn’t mean you can’t access the standard behavior, and it doesn’t mean you can’t override the standard behavior. It means you can’t access the override. It’s the override’s functionality that’s not available.
  • There are two additional standard actions, Accept and Clone. These actions are more complex, and overriding them is an advanced project. Overriding them with Lightning components isn’t supported.

How and Where You Can Use Lightning Component Action Overrides

Lightning components can be used to override the View, New, Edit, and Tab standard actions in Lightning Experience and Salesforce1. Unlike Visualforce, overrides that use Lightning components don’t affect Salesforce Classic. That is:
  • If you override a standard action with a Visualforce page, it overrides the action in Salesforce Classic, Lightning Experience, and Salesforce1.
  • If you override a standard action with a Lightning component, it overrides the action in Lightning Experience and Salesforce1, but the standard Salesforce page is used in Salesforce Classic.

A Lightning record page for an object takes precedence over an override of the object’s View action. That is, if you override the View action for an object, and you also create and assign a Lightning record page for the object, the Lightning record page is used. The override has no effect. This is true whether the override uses a Lightning component or a Visualforce page.

Action overrides aren’t supported in Lightning console apps, and are silently ignored when invoked. If a Lightning console app user triggers an action that has been overridden, they see the standard action instead. If they trigger the same action outside of a Lightning console app, they see the overridden action. This behavior can result in an inconsistent user experience, which you should warn users about. Also ensure that you meet your data validation requirements using triggers and validation rules, rather than code that only runs in the action override. This strategy ensures that your data is valid, whether it’s changed using a standard action or an action override.