For an organization with a large user base, maintaining the level of engagement that is expected nowadays can be a challenge. One way companies are approaching it is by setting up online community portals to enable two-way interactions.

Salesforce.com Inc. is working on expanding the appeal of this approach to more markets. As part of the effort, the company is rolling out new features for its Community Cloud today that tackle one of the most time-consuming tasks involved in building a user portal: designing the interface.

Since the main purpose of such sites is to drive engagement, creating a sleek look is a much bigger priority than with regular business applications. Salesforce has added in readymade templates that make it possible to quickly set up the layout without any coding. From there, companies can customize the interface using a newly added feature called the Branding Panel.

The menu provides the ability to match the color scheme with that which a firm uses on other platforms and then automatically insert the company logo into the appropriate sections. It’s designed to complement the Lightning Community Builder that Salesforce introduced last year. That tool serves as a sort of design workbench, enabling users to craft a community portal with drag-and-drop controls.

A software company might use Community Cloud to set up a site through which its salespeople people can share lead data with partners. An online retailer could create a knowledge base that provides product information and lets customers submit support requests.

If a company’s needs are not met by the built-in components, it can turn to Community Cloud’s advanced design options. The newest addition is a connector for importing banners, fonts and other assets from Adobe Experience Manager, which many organizations use to store their custom graphic content. Community Cloud’s built-in CSS editor enables developers to adjust each element for their portal as needed. 

Today’s feature release is the latest in a series of updates that Salesforce.com has rolled out recently. Previously, the company introduced a computer vision service that can scan images posted on social media for information relevant to a company’s marketing efforts. 

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