Visualforce - Beyond Basics Series 5 - App agnostic widgets in sidebar

Is there a customization section common to all Apps ?

Yes. Salesforce provides sidebar for this purpose. This sidebar is nothing but a collection of standard & custom components. Standard components include Create New, Recent Items, Tags, Custom Links, Recycle Bin.

What is allowed inside a sidebar component ?

you can have one of the following types for a component,

1.   Links
2.   Image
3.   HTML
4.   Visualforce

How can we use visualforce ?

Most of the time one can use visualforce to build a sidebar component for one of 3 purposes,

1.   Output Stats, Quotes, Reminders, Important messages etc
2.   Input a value from user & take action in Apex
3.   Set of links for Navigation

Where is the code ?

I have given code for illustrating all these use cases. To try this out,
  1) you need to create a new 'Custom Component' under Setup -> Home -> Home Page Components.
        - with 'visualforce' type, height 200px, narrow type
        - select the visualforce page (copy the code from below)
  2) Then, you need to add this new component into current Home Page Layout.

	<apex:page controller="testcls5_06122016">
	<apex:form>
	<!-- Display Section (Output Area) -->
	<apex:outputPanel layout="block">
	Today's Quote - {!$Setup.TodaysQuote__c.Quote__c}
	</apex:outputPanel>
	<hr/><br/>
	<!-- User Input Section (Input Area) -->
	<apex:inputText value="{!searchStr}" html-placeholder="Type something to search in products"/>
	<apex:commandButton value="Search" action="{!doSearch}" reRender="SearchResultArea"/>
	<apex:outputPanel id="SearchResultArea">
	<apex:outputText value="{!searchResult}"/>
	</apex:outputPanel>
	<hr/><br/>
	<!-- Navigation Section (Redirection Area) -->
	<apex:outputPanel layout="block">
	<apex:outputText value="Menu" style="font-weight:bold;"/>
	<apex:panelGrid columns="1">
	<apex:outputLink value="https://www.google.com" target="_blank">
	Google
	</apex:outputLink>
	<apex:outputLink value="https://www.wikipedia.com" target="_blank">
	Wikipedia
	</apex:outputLink>
	</apex:panelGrid>
	</apex:outputPanel>
	</apex:form>
	</apex:page>

view raw gistfile1.txt hosted with ❤ by GitHub

	public class testcls5_06122016 {
	public String searchStr {get; set;}
	public String searchResult {get; set;}
	public void doSearch() {
	searchResult = '10 products found';
	}
	}

view raw gistfile1.txt hosted with ❤ by GitHub