Quick Start—Advanced

This advanced quick start shows you how to get started with more of the Canvas features. It takes you step-by-step through the process of creating, packaging, uploading, installing, and running a canvas app.

The sample canvas app is a “hello world” Web page that calls the Canvas SDK to display the current user’s name.

In this example, you:

• Clone the “hello world” app from GitHub.

• Run the app on a local Web server.

• Expose the Web app as a canvas app in your Salesforce development org. You can either:

  • Use an external client app for your canvas app (recommended).

  • Use a connected app for your canvas app.

    In Spring ’26, the ability to create new connected apps is disabled by default. We recommend using external client apps for all new Canvas integrations. To enable creation of new connected apps, contact Salesforce Customer Support.

• Test the app in the Canvas App Previewer.

• Deploy the Web app to Heroku.

• Package and upload the canvas app.

• Install the canvas app in another Salesforce org and run it as a user would.

The steps in this quick start assume you’re using Windows. You can use another OS, but there might be some minor differences in the steps.

• Prerequisites

  Get the appropriate access and tools to complete the quick start.

• Clone the Project from GitHub

  The “hello world” sample project is part of the Canvas SDK, which is located on GitHub. From GitHub, clone the project to make a copy of it on your local machine.

• Run the Web App Locally

• Create the Canvas App

  To create a canvas app, you need the Customize Application and Modify All Data user permissions.

• Configure Who Can Access the Canvas App

  To configure access for specific users, update the policies and profiles for the corresponding external client app or connected app.

• Deploy the Web App to Heroku

  After you run the web app locally and test it as a canvas app, deploy the web app to Heroku and run it from there.

• Deploy the Canvas External Client App to an Org

  Deploy and retrieve your Canvas integration for the external client app with Metadata API. The Canvas plugin has its own settings files and policies file.

• Update the Canvas App

  In this step, you update the canvas app to run the “hello world” app that’s now running on Heroku.

• Package the Canvas App

  Packaging is the first step in making your canvas app available for installation in another org.

• Configure Who Can Access the Installed Canvas App

See Also

• Introducing Canvas
• Prerequisites