Last Updated on December 31, 2020 by Rakesh Gupta

Needless to say, every software vendor wants to create and launch a successful application – not the one to be lost in a sea of competition where everyone struggles to be the best. Salesforce is a big name in the industry because of its products. Salesforce designs its products in such a way that it is easy to configure and use. When I started my career, the Salesforce user interface (legacy) looked like the following screenshot:

Later, Salesforce came up with the Classic user interface that many of us are currently using. The classic user interface looked like the following screenshot:  

In 2015, Salesforce released a new user interface known as Lightning Experience. Lightning Experience is a new generation productive user interface designed to help your sales team to close more deals and sell quicker and smarter. And, similarly, it also enables your support team to close cases faster using various tools and Lightning Components. The Lightning Experience user interface looks like the following screenshot:

The upswing in mobile usage is influencing the way people work. Sales representatives are now using mobile to research potential customers, get the details of nearby customer offices, socially connect with customers, and much more. This is one of the fundamental reasons why Salesforce synced the desktop Lightning Experience with mobile Salesforce1. 

Going forward, everything will be Lightning

The Lightning interface provides a more natural user experience than the familiar Salesforce Classic. It may take some time for users to adjust to the Lightning Experience. But, the advantages of Lightning Experience makes the adjustment worthwhile. Lightning Experience user Interface is faster, quicker to customize, and easier to maintain.

Indeed, with every release, Lightning Experience is getting better and better. For example, when it was first launched, the side navigation bar could not be customized. Now, using drag-and-drop features, you can customize the navigation bar and complete page layouts.

Salesforce’s release pattern reveals that, while it is not stopping Salesforce Classic, the focus is certainly shifting towards Lightning. Many of the Salesforce Clouds, such as Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Pardot, have already received design overhauls if they were born in Classic. 

Salesforce is not only adding new features to Lightning Experience (for example, Kanban View and Report Builder (beta), etc., but, it is also putting effort to migrate features from the Classic interface to Lightning Experience (For example, Collaborative Forecasts, Enterprise Territory Management, and, Add a Case Comment from a Related List, etc).

To enable or not to enable, that is the question!

There is no doubt that the Lightning Experience is enormously cool. It offers tons of neat new functionalities and a beautiful interface that makes data look so much friendlier and more impressive. Currently, all features from Salesforce Classic are not available in Lightning Experience. But, this need not be a roadblock for you. Winter’18 release will give you hundreds of reasons to switch to Lightning Experience. Some of the key features that are now available in Winter’18 Lightning Experience include – Territory Management, Collaborative Forecasts, Report folder sharing, Sharing your calendar with co-workers, Case Milestones, Service Contracts, Lightning Report Builder (beta), etc. 

The decision of whether to migrate to Lightning Experience or not will depend on the current functionalities enabled in your customer’s Salesforce organization. Before going ahead, make sure to understand your customer’s current implementation so you can get an idea about all out-of-the-box functionalities they are currently using; and, also about the customizations within the customer’s organization. Lightning Experience is undergoing rapid development. As a result, many of the current limitations will be addressed and covered in the next few releases.

The next step, on your migration journey, is to list relevant functionalities in Excel and check not only functionalities that are available in Lighting Experience but also familiarize yourself with functionalities that are not available in Lightning Experience. For instance, suppose an out-of-the-box functionality, such as Ability to Assign Tasks in Lightning to Multiple Users, is heavily used by Sales or Support reps in Classic. Since this functionality is currently not available in Lightning Experience it could be a deal-breaker. And, if this is indeed the case then, customers should wait for Salesforce to deliver the needed functionalities in Lightning Experience before embarking on the migration journey.

Now suppose not all users are using a feature, that is not available in Lightning Experience – A case in point could be – ‘Ability to Assign Tasks in Lightning to Multiple Users‘. Usually, VP of Sales is not going to create a task and assign it to multiple users – instead of working on numbers. If so then, identify such users, and migrate only them to Lightning Experience. The key is to identify such users. By migrating few users to Lighting Experience, it will be easier for you to train them and they can, in turn, help the next batch of Lightning Experience users (migration from classic) to understand the new interface.

Salesforce Trailhead makes migration simple

Once you have identified the users that you are planning to migrate to Lightning Experience, rest is quite easy – the best thing to do, to prepare for the migration, is to nudge the migrating users to go through Trailhead Lighting Experience modules. Make sure to complete the following Lightning Experience Trailhead modules. Then, request your customers to do the same!

• Migrating to Lightning Experience
• Get Started with Lightning Experience – Administrator
• Make a move to Lightning Experience – Business Users

The above-mentioned Trailhead modules will help you to migrate from Classic to Lightning Experience smoothly. If you want to restrict a user to use Lightning Experience only, make sure to create a Permission set (add ‘Hide Option to Switch to Salesforce Classic‘ permission) and then assign it to the migrating users.

I hope the above information contributes towards making your migration journey to Lightning Experience smooth!

Technical Editor and Proofreader: - Munira Majmundar