Optimize Lightning Experience Performance

Learning Objectives

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

Identify and troubleshoot network issues.
Identify and troubleshoot device issues.
Identify and troubleshoot browser issues.
Identify and troubleshoot Salesforce configuration issues.

Introduction

Now that you know why Experienced Page Time is important and how it can be measured, let’s look at some factors that can affect EPT. By understanding these factors, you’ll be better prepared to troubleshoot issues when your pages aren’t loading as fast as you’d like.

There are four main factors that can adversely affect EPT:

Network: Conditions and “distance” between the device and the host instance.
Device: Available processing power, memory, and resources of your devices.
Browser: Specific browser processing capabilities and configuration.
Salesforce Configuration: Lightning page customizations, Visualforce implementations, or specific org customizations.

Network Issues That Affect Page Performance

When we talk about network concerns, we are talking about the network conditions between the end user’s device and the Salesforce instance. These conditions can be affected by something as simple as geographical distance, to factors as complex as degraded Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) performance due to latency issues between the client device and remotely-located web servers, or whether your users are using VPNs.

Take the following example: Let’s say you have a user from Asia accessing an instance that’s hosted in Europe. When the user opens a Lightning Experience session, information has to travel back and forth between Asia and Europe a minimum of three times just to establish a secure session. Any subsequent action, like downloading a record or file, also needs to travel across continents. All this inter-continental travel can slow down Experienced Page Time and negatively affects user experience.

Best Practices for Mitigating Network Issues

Here are some things you can do to help minimize network issues.

Ask your company’s network admin or IT professionals to assess your network latency when connecting to your Salesforce environment. They can run utilities such as “ping” or “traceroute” to gather data and then determine ways to optimize network connection speed.
Measure latency, as well as download and upload speeds, using the Salesforce Speedtest. For the fastest and most stable experience, a latency of 150ms or lower is recommended as well as a download speed of 3Mbps or higher.
Use Akamai’s Content Delivery Network (CDN) to improve the first load time of static content by storing cached versions of resources in multiple geographic locations.

Device Issues That Affect Page Performance

If you’re an admin, you need to be able to help your users no matter what device they use to access Lightning Experience. Some of your users may be using a desktop computer; others may be using a tablet, mobile phone, or smartwatch.

The Lightning framework relies on your device’s available resources, such as processing power, memory, and even hard disk performance, to execute JavaScript and optimize rendering. As you might expect, a high-end desktop with all the bells and whistles will run Lightning Experience faster than a two-year-old phone that has seen better days.

Best Practices for Mitigating Device Issues

Here are a few things to think about if you suspect your devices are causing performance issues.

Find your devices’ Octane scores. An Octane score is a benchmark that measures a JavaScript engine's performance by running a series of automated tests. The higher the Octane score, the better your Lightning Experience performance will be. You can find the Octane score for a specific device by appending “speedtest.jsp” to your org’s domain.
Make sure your device has enough RAM. For a stable experience, we recommend at least 8GB of RAM, with 3GB available for Salesforce browser tabs.

Browser Issues That Affect Page Performance

Lightning Experience supports most browsers, but you may find that it runs faster in some browsers than others. For instance, Lightning Experience usually runs faster in Google Chrome than in Internet Explorer.

If you’re experiencing performance issues related to your browser, there are a number of requirements and recommendations that are shared across all browsers. These include making sure JavaScript, Cookies, and TLS are enabled. You should also check to see if you have the appropriate browser settings to display inline frames (iframes). Screen resolution can also impact performance; the minimum screen resolution for Salesforce features to run correctly is 1024 X 768. Finally, some third-party browser plug-ins and extensions can interfere with browser performance.

In addition to global browser recommendations, there may be specific requirements and recommendations for each browser. For example, you should be aware that using Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) may expose you to different performance and security risks.

The end of access and support for Lightning Experience with Microsoft Internet Explorer version 11 (IE11), including Lightning console apps such as Lightning Sales Console and Lightning Service Console, including Lightning console apps such as Lightning Sales Console and Lightning Service Console, was discontinued in December 2020. We recommend using an alternative browser to get the best experience.

Best Practices for Mitigating Browser Issues

If you think your browser is causing performance issues, here are a few steps you can take to speed things up.

Assess your browser processing capability using Octane.
Upgrade to devices with more processing power and memory.
Disable unneeded browser plug-ins and extensions.
Make sure you are using the latest browser version and have installed any required patches.
Switch browsers. As we mentioned above, Chrome is usually the fastest browser for Lightning Experience, while Internet Explorer is usually the slowest.
Restart your browser or device. Restarting browsers and client devices once a week can help.
If you are an Internet Explorer user, look into using another browser.

Salesforce Configuration Issues That Affect Page Performance

Another factor that can impact EPT is how your Lightning pages are optimized and configured in Salesforce. As you might guess, a standard record page will load faster than a custom page with lots of fields, embedded Visualforce pages, or heavily customized components. Other configuration factors could include using non-optimized Visualforce implementations or using Lightning Experience debug mode.

Best Practices for Mitigating Salesforce Configuration Issues

Here are some steps you can take to optimize your Salesforce configurations and improve page performance.

Optimize your Visualforce pages.
Disable Lightning Experience debug mode.
Reconfigure processing-intensive pages, such as pages with large number of fields, inefficient custom components, or complex page configurations.
Use the Salesforce Lightning Inspector Chrome Extension to inspect component attributes and identify performance bottlenecks on a page.

Let’s Wrap Up

You should now have a better understanding of what EPT is, how to measure it, and what to look for if your pages aren’t performing as expected. If you want to learn more, you can review the Lightning Components Performance Best Practices blog post. Also look further into Trailhead for more resources, and join our community of admins and developers through the Salesforce Trailblazer Community to share ideas, join groups, read success stories, and more.

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