Apr 25, 2020
Salesforce Lightning: What is it, and why should you care?
If you are in the business world, the tech community, or have ever driven through the city of San Francisco, you’ve likely heard or seen the name Salesforce in some capacity. As someone who works in the Salesforce ecosystem I find the most difficult question I get about Salesforce (aside from ‘Tell me again what you do for work?’) is what is Salesforce and why do you have lightning bolts all over your phone case?
All kidding aside, one of the most talked about topics within the Salesforce world today is ‘Lightning Experience’. Lightning is the most modern way to use Salesforce and is slowly but surely gaining market share within Salesforce as the legacy interface, Salesforce Classic is slowly declining. Many organizations are switching over from Classic to Lightning to start to gain benefit from some of the features that are not available in Classic. Many say that Salesforce Lightning is just a new user interface (UI), but it’s much more than that, and the more time passes, the better Salesforce Lightning becomes.
What Can Salesforce Lightning do that Salesforce Classic can’t?
When Salesforce Lightning was released in 2015 there were a number of features that were not available on Salesforce Lightning and some users experienced frustration when switching back and forth between the interfaces. Fast forward to today and those reasons have been mostly, if not all been eliminated. Now we are on the opposite swing, there are many features that you cannot get within Classic that are being built and enhanced within Lightning experience.
Below are my 3 favorite Salesforce Lightning exclusive features and why I believe they make switching to Salesforce Lightning worth the time and effort!
- Salesforce Mobile Application
The Salesforce Mobile application is available on Android and iOS mobile platforms and empowers your business to be functional on the go. The Salesforce Mobile app is built on the Salesforce Lightning platform and continues to get better over time. This combined with Einstein Voice makes managing your day-to-day as a Sales rep, field tech, executive on the go, marketer, or many other different professionals lives easier. This application allows you to enjoy your system efficiencies, workflows, and other functionality on the go.
2. Kanban View
Kanban (in simple details) is a workflow management tracker that visualizes your work and drives organization, efficiency, and visibility into your workload. Salesforce, within the Salesforce Lightning experience, has taken this concept and allowed organizations to take their data within Salesforce and display it this way to assist users in tracking their progress across different workflows. This view is extremely helpful for the following (and may other use cases)
- Sales users tracking in progress deals by stage for effective funnel management.
- Tracking in-progress leads based on stage and level of engagement.
- Support teams tracking and managing tickets within Salesforce to support customers.
There are many other use cases for the Kanban view, but it is a highly effective, dynamic, and easy to configure feature within Salesforce.
3. Lightning App Builder
I saved perhaps my favorite feature for last within this article because of how easy the Lightning App Builder is to configure. The Lightning App Builder allows admins and developers alike to quickly, and confidently create and deploy applications within the Salesforce platform. This feature can be used to build more effective record pages, home pages, and applications to enhance user productivity and provide your teams with a beneficial experience.
These above three features are just three of countless other features that would hit my favorites list within Salesforce Lightning. If you’re interested in learning more about these features please see the below Trailhead links for hands on learning:
In closing, Salesforce Lightning is an amazing feature that compliments the Salesforce experience very nicely. If you’re looking to sharpen your skills, learn a new skill-set, or just dive into Salesforce you can find countless resources on Salesforce Lightning across multiple blogs, websites, Youtube videos, and various groups across the web. However, if you want hands on learning exercises I strongly recommend Trailhead as your main place to start. There are hundreds of learning paths available on Salesforce Lightning no matter what level of experience you have!
