How to auto-refresh list views in Salesforce

A Lightning list view shows the records as they were when you opened it. A new lead or a deal a colleague just won only shows up after you press Refresh, and the line under the title says how stale it is: “Updated 14 minutes ago”. The Auto-refresh for Salesforce template refreshes the list for you every minute, in your own browser.

Steps

1. In Skins Studio, open Explore, pick Auto-refresh for Salesforce and click Create App.
2. Open a list view in Lightning. Open the Skins side panel from the browser toolbar. The skin is listed under On this page.
3. Switch it on. An Auto-refresh pill appears next to “Updated … ago”, with a ring that fills up to the next refresh.
4. Leave the list open. Every minute it refreshes: new records appear, changed values update, and changes are briefly highlighted so you can see what moved.

What you get

• The list view refreshes itself every minute, on every list view you open.
• An Auto-refresh pill next to “Updated … ago” shows it is on and when the next refresh comes.
• Rows that are new and values that changed since the last refresh are highlighted for a moment.

Limits

• It refreshes while the tab is visible. A list in a background tab refreshes when you come back to it.
• It waits while you are editing a cell or have rows selected, so a refresh never throws away what you are doing.
• It presses the list’s own Refresh button, so each refresh costs what a click on Refresh costs, no more.
• The interval is one minute. Change it in the template in Studio (for example to five minutes).

Other options

• Press Refresh: the circular arrow next to the list view controls reloads the list.
• Reload the page: the browser’s reload shows the latest records too, and takes longer.
• Dashboards and reports: a dashboard can refresh on a schedule, if the view you need is a summary.
• Ask Salesforce: upvote the idea. Its status is Open.