Get Your Bearings

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Identify the icons in the Lightning Experience header and know what they do.
  
• Access your Lightning Experience profile page.
  
• Personalize your Lightning Experience profile page.
  
• Get help from anywhere in Lightning Experience.
  

Welcome to Lightning Experience

Hi there! Welcome to Lightning Experience, the modern, productivity-enhancing experience from Salesforce. We reinvented the desktop environment to better support your sales and service business processes. The result is an intuitive, intelligent interface that helps you work more naturally, and more efficiently. We think you’re going to like what you see here.

This module assumes that you’re experienced working in Salesforce Classic, and that your company is making the switch to Lightning Experience real soon now. Perhaps you’re the proactive type and excited to learn about what’s coming your way. Perhaps your Salesforce admin asked you to complete this badge so you’re prepared when the switch happens. Either way, we know that your time is valuable. And busy people rarely feel like they have time for change.

While Lightning Experience can look different, it’s based on the Salesforce concepts and principles you already understand. And the interface was designed to be intuitive, to reduce clicks, to simplify your job. So don’t worry, it won’t be long before you’re a Lightning Experience pro.

Let’s Get Oriented

You can work in Salesforce Classic with your eyes closed. You know where everything is and exactly how to do your job. We understand that you may find the switch to Lightning Experience a bit disorienting at first. And it’s frustrating to be slowed down because you don’t know your way around. So let’s start with a quick tour of the place to get you oriented.

At first glance, Lightning Experience may seem really different because of its fresh, modern design. But looking closer, you quickly see that many core Salesforce Classic features made the journey to Lightning Experience.

Here’s where you can find basic Salesforce Classic features (bottom image) in Lightning Experience (top image).

The Salesforce header (1) provides persistent access to these familiar options:

• Global search (2)—Find records, files, and groups.
  
• Help (3)—Get help and training resources, including walkthroughs, videos, and Trailhead.
  
• Setup (4)—Set up, maintain, and customize your org (assuming you have admin permissions).
  
• Profile and personal settings (5)—Access your Chatter profile and view or update your personal settings.
  
• App Launcher (6)—View and switch between Salesforce apps and connected apps.
  
• The navigation bar (7)—Primary way to access your org’s objects and features.
  

You’ve probably noticed some things that don’t seem so familiar. It’s true that Lightning Experience treats you to several new enhancements for upping your day-to-day efficiency. These options are always available, no matter where you are in Lightning Experience.

• Favorites (8)—Create shortcuts to the records, lists, groups, and other pages that you work with regularly.
  
• Global actions (9)—Multitask whenever important ideas hit you without needing to switch away from work in progress. Create tasks and events, jot down notes, log call details, and more, all from composer windows that stay put as you navigate around.
  
• Notifications (10)—Keep track of your notifications, including task reminders, Chatter post mentions, and approval requests. The  icon informs you when you have unread notifications. And you can quickly jump to the details from the notifications list.
  
• Utility bar (11)—Quickly access productivity tools from this persistent footer. Options are plentiful, including utilities for taking notes, displaying list views, accessing recent records, and running macros to complete repetitive tasks. (Not seeing a utility bar in your org? Ask your Salesforce admin to consider adding it to some or all of your Salesforce apps.)
  

There’s obviously more to say to help you effectively integrate these new time-saving options into your daily routine. We get into more details later on in this module, and in the Lightning Experience Productivity module too.

A quick word about records before we move on. As you can see from our tour, record pages look pretty different now. We have a unit coming up whose sole purpose in life is to help you quickly feel at home working with your data in the reimagined, efficient workspaces of Lightning Experience.

Find Your Profile and Personal Settings

In Salesforce Classic, you get to your profile and personal settings from the menu with your name (1). Same concept in Lightning Experience, although now you’re represented by an avatar (2).

From your profile menu, click Settings to update your personal information. Or click your name to get to your profile.

Personalize Yourself

By the way, if you haven’t included a photo of yourself on your profile yet, this is how you look in Lightning Experience: . As cute as Astro is, wouldn’t you rather look like yourself? Take this opportunity to personalize yourself, so you and your colleagues can see who you are.

Upload a profile photo from your profile page. You remember how to get there, right?

Click the default Astro avatar (1), then select Update Photo.

You can also jazz up your profile page by adding a custom banner photo (2). Have fun with it—use an image that brightens up your day or shares something personally meaningful with your colleagues. You get best results with a panoramic image that’s at least 1280 x 300 pixels.

And don’t forget to say a little something about yourself, if you haven’t already (3).

Here’s how Diego personalized his profile. Nice, right?

Is It Time for a Vacation Yet?

Have you ever wished for a fast way to let colleagues know in advance that you’ll be on vacation? Or wanted a way to communicate that you shouldn’t be disturbed? The Out of Office feature on your Lightning Experience profile page is for you.

The default Out of Office message is “Out of Office” along with the start and end dates that you select. But you can customize the message to something more relevant... or fun. (“Off to the beach” anyone?)

Your message starts as soon as you save it. It displays prominently next to your name on your profile and in your Chatter posts and comments. And it expires on the end date, so you don’t need to remember to turn it off.

Get Help Anywhere You Need It

Maybe we’ll skip taking that vacation for now because there’s still a lot of good stuff to discover about working in Lightning Experience. So what’s one of the most important things to know when learning about a new environment? How to get help!

Behold, your new beacon of hope (beacon of help?). The Help Menu is always there for you at the top of every page.

The Help Menu includes helpful information about keyboard shortcuts, plus links to visit Trailhead, Salesforce Help, and the Salesforce Release Notes.

Resources

• Video: Lightning Experience: Let’s Take it for a Spin
• Salesforce Help: Find Profile and Personal Settings in Lightning Experience
• Salesforce Help: Find Help in Lightning Experience