Sharing and Reusing Layouts
A layout is worth building once and using widely. The risk is a proliferation nobody maintains.
Where to find it
Architect Panel → Layout & Pages:
- Data Layouts — the layouts, then Layout Builder on a row
- Record Layout — per-field sections and widths
Admin Panel → User Administration:
- User Groups — who a layout is offered to
Prefer a shared default
One layout used by everybody is one layout to update when a field is added. Three role-specific layouts are three, and in practice two of them will be updated.
Start shared and split only when a genuine difference appears.
When a separate layout is justified
- A genuinely different task — logging a case against investigating one.
- A different audience — a customer-facing screen against an internal one.
- A different device — a short mobile layout for field staff.
Not "this team prefers a different order".
Name them so the purpose is obvious
"Case — log", "Case — investigate", "Case — customer". Somebody choosing a layout six months from now has the name and nothing else.
Layouts drift
A field added to one and not the others, a group reordered in one place. Over a year the set diverges until nobody can say which is correct.
A periodic comparison — do these layouts still contain the same fields — takes minutes and prevents that.
Retire what nobody uses
Layouts accumulate from experiments and one-off requirements. Where the platform records how often a layout is used, that is the list to work from; where it does not, ask.
Layouts do not enforce anything
Worth being explicit about. Leaving a field off a layout hides it on that screen; it does not stop anybody seeing or changing it elsewhere.
If a field must not be visible to somebody, that is field security, not layout design.
Tell people when a layout changes
Somebody who has learned where a field is will look for it there. A rearrangement without warning generates support contacts that a single sentence would have prevented.
Worked example
An organisation runs one shared layout per table, with a single exception for field staff who use a short mobile version. The two are compared quarterly to confirm they hold the same fields, which twice caught a field added to only one.
Recommendations
- One shared layout until a real difference appears.
- Name layouts by purpose.
- Compare layouts periodically for drift.
- Never use a layout as a security control.