Lightning looks and feels faster, cleaner, newer and dare I say it “sexier” than Salesforce Classic. The new lightning platform not only helps developers build faster with reusable components. Lightning prides itself on being an efficiency driven workspace, allowing users to find, prioritize and act quicker.

The change from classic to Lightning, is a daunting change to anyone, especially as a NfP with very limited resources so here are my top tips for starting on the journey to Lightning. In this blog, I am going to show you my favourite features. But don’t forget to contact the evolve team here at Hyphen8 for more information and demos to move your org into Lightning. 

Improved User Interface

One of the biggest selling points to moving to lightning is the vastly improved user interface. Everything is so much cleaner and easier to use. 

Improved, Intelligent Search

The Lightning Experience global search box. It’s at the top of every page, and it’s the fastest way to bring what you need right to your fingertips.

Think of search as your personal assistant—your very smart personal assistant. It anticipates your needs and helps you find what you’re looking for from anywhere in the app.

As soon as you click into the box, search starts working for you. A list of recent items provides quick links to records you’ve recently visited.

Activity Timeline

Easily view past tasks, events and emails in a chronological order of when they are due. You can also easily access email, log a call and new event quick actions from this super helpful pane too! 

With the activity timeline, it’s much easier for Users to monitor the recent activity on any Salesforce record. The timeline tracks meetings, tasks, calls, and emails. Users can see what they’ve done and what they still have left to do for each opportunity, lead, account, and contact.

Home Page Improvements

The Lightning homepage is implemented through a component model, which provides much greater flexibility to the content that can be displayed. Salesforce provides a number of components out of the box such as; recent records, reports, news, assistant and more. Additionally, custom components can be developed to meet almost any business need.

Components have revolutionised how we can use Salesforce. Home page components give you a selection of preconfigured components including news, dashboards, today’s events, key items, recent items. Home pages can now become as customised as you need them them to be, and users can edit them to their heart’s content!

Increase Productivity with Favourites

Like your favourites or bookmarks in your browser, Lightning Favourites are a great way for users to boost productivity by personalising how they navigate Salesforce. Simply clicking the star while on a record, dashboard or report allows a User to easily navigate back there from anywhere in the system using the favourites menu.

Guide Users with Paths

Paths can be used to guide users through each stage of your company’s process. It allows Users to easily change the status of a record by clicking on one of the chevrons and can provide useful tips and fields dependent on the current status.

For example, a Request Path could be developed to allow Users to progress a Request stage, providing tips on what fields need to be completed at each stage and highlight some useful tips on processes and actions (Such as utilising Conga merges at specific stages, etc)

Dynamic Page Layouts

Page Layouts within the Lightning Experience also follow the component model which provides massive flexibility to how Users can interact with their objects in Salesforce. Pages can be split into multiple columns, or utilise multiple tabs to make the most important data readily available. Components can also be dynamically hidden on a page depending on defined criteria (all though the declarative interface, no code required!) and the page will automatically move components to accommodate; so no more white-space if the component isn’t rendered. 

Reports and Dashboards have had an overhaul.

Salesforce Lightning comes with a new Reports and Dashboard builder that has been expanded and optimised with a number of new features including;

• Ability to resize Dashboard Components freely
• Enhanced Dashboard components including new chart types; sorting by values grouped within reports; dashboard tables with multiple columns; ability to share a dashboard component on chatter; and many more.
• Allowing Users to interactively drill-down into report data using clickable report charts
• Mobile-first approach allowing the same dashboard displayed in the Lightning UI to be viewed in the Salesforce mobile app.
• And many more…

Recycle and Reuse Lightning Components

Everything within the Lightning Experience is driven through a component based model, which allows a much greater flexibility on how custom development can be used. If a custom Lightning component (which is a new Salesforce development tool) isn’t specifically developed to relate to a single object, then it can be reused on any object throughout the system..

For further guidance on how moving to lightning could transform the way your organisation works, please get in touch with the team at Hyphen8. Contact the Team