Salesforce lightning platform provides various development tools that are based on click development and to boost productivity for Salesforce users. One of the tools is the Lightning Object Creator.

Lightning Object Creator

Lightning Object Creator is a hidden gem in Salesforce lightning to create objects from spreadsheets, Google sheets, Onedrive, or Quip documents. You can start using Lightning Object Creator by clicking here.

In order to use the Salesforce Lightning Object Creator tool you need to be a lightning experience user because this tool simply doesn't work in Salesforce Classic. Mostly because it is built for Lightning users and also looks more like a Salesforce Lightning component.

You need to authenticate your org and Allow access to Lightning Object Creator. To start off, its similar to dataloader. You need to use a CSV (comma separated file) with all the data cleaned and garbage values removed. Salesforce lightning object creator then reads the file and detects the header of the file and makes it the Salesforce field name. You get the option to change the Salesforce field types if required. 

If you have multiple sheets in your excel spreadsheet,  you can select the worksheet tab in Lightning Object Creator to create objects from the worksheet tab. You get an option to either create the object with the fields without data or to load data alongside objects and fields.


When to use Lightning Object Creator?

✔️ When you have to create a new object. 
✔️ When you have data in CSV(comma-separated values) or Excel format (.xls).
✔️ When your data types are text, picklist, picklist(multi-select), currency, text area, checkbox, percent, geolocation, datetime.
✔️ When you want to load the data along with the object creation.


When NOT to use Lightning Object Creator?

❌ When you have an existing object or you have to add new fields to an object.
❌ When you have data in a text file or word document.
❌ When you want to create lookup and master-detail relationships.
❌ When you want to create formula fields.

Conclusion

Lightning Object Creator has huge potential and can save a lot of time when creating a new object along with its data. Salesforce will keep improving these tools eventually but for now, it does have some setbacks. Creating fields and objects is not a difficult task but it is very time-consuming with all the clicks and steps to perform for every field. As this tool is now generally available, you can make most of it to create objects in lightning.