| title | Build Without Code |
|---|---|
| description | What admins and business analysts can do visually in Console, Studio, and Setup — and how that stays in sync with metadata written as code |
You do not have to write metadata files to build on this platform. Console, Studio, and Setup cover the run–design–administer loop visually — and everything you do there produces the same metadata artifacts a developer would write by hand, checked by the same validation gate. Clicking and coding are two editors over one definition, so a team can freely mix both.
/_console/ is the workspace end users live in:
- Home lists your apps, pending approvals, scheduled digests, and recently visited records.
- Each app renders its declared navigation, views (table, kanban, calendar, gantt, …), dashboards, and record pages — switch views from the toolbar, save filters, pin favorites.
- Approvals inbox collects everything waiting on you; decisions (approve / reject / send back) happen here.
- Record pages carry the collaboration surface: discussion threads, attachments, activity timeline, and change history.
- Global search (
⌘K) spans objects, with partial and pinyin matching.
From any app, "Design in Studio" opens the same application in design mode. Studio is organized around four pillars:
| Pillar | What you manage there |
|---|---|
| Data | Every object with its fields, plus per-object tabs for records, forms, validation rules, lifecycle hooks, actions, and API exposure |
| Automation | All flows in one list with enable/disable switches; each opens as a visual diagram — triggers, branches, approval nodes, run history, and problem markers |
| Interface | Apps, navigation, views, pages, and dashboards |
| Access | Permission sets as a matrix of object/field grants, plus sharing configuration |
Two properties make Studio safe to hand to non-developers:
- Draft → publish. Changes save as drafts and go live only when published, with a change list to review first.
- Same gate as code. A change that would break the app (a dangling reference, an invalid predicate) is rejected by the same validation that checks hand-written metadata — there is no "UI edits bypass review" back door.
The System Settings app covers platform administration: user management and invitations, permission assignment, datasources (including federated external databases), diagnostics and audit logs, and the Marketplace — template apps such as HotCRM install with one click and appear alongside your own apps, ready to customize in Studio.
Visual editing shines for day-to-day evolution: adding fields, adjusting views, tweaking a flow, granting access. Teams typically switch to metadata as code when they want version control and pull-request review across many changes, AI-assisted authoring, or promotion of the same app across environments. Both roads meet in the same artifact — start visual, graduate to code, or run both side by side.