Decide When Lightning Experience Is Right for Your Company
Learning Objectives
- Describe some of the major feature differences between Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic.
- Describe some of the features that aren’t supported by Lightning Experience, and know where to get more details.
- Use best practices and the Lightning Experience Migration Assistant to help you determine when it’s the right time to switch your company to Lightning Experience.
Does My Org Qualify for Lightning Experience?
Let’s look at the supported editions and user licenses to see if you can enable and use Lightning Experience.
| Supported Editions | Unsupported Editions |
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| Supported Licenses | Unsupported Licenses |
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Important
To learn about browser options and limitations for Lightning Experience, see Supported Browsers for Lightning Experience in the Salesforce Help.
If your org still uses Internet Explorer 11, be aware that we’re in the process of retiring support for this browser. There are significant performance issues when running Lightning Experience in IE11. Even if you opt into the extended support option for IE11, we recommend migrating your users to an alternate modern browser like Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge as soon as possible.
Understanding Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic
Lightning Experience is a modern user interface that helps your sales reps sell faster and your service reps support customers more productively. Lightning Experience includes many new features and entirely redesigned pages, but not every Salesforce feature is supported in Lightning Experience. So the Salesforce experience you’ve known to date—called Salesforce Classic—is still available for you, and the users you enable for Lightning Experience can switch between the two at will.
As your company’s trusted advisor for Salesforce, you need to help your company decide when to enable Lightning Experience. So, we’ve got to start getting you educated on Lightning Experience features versus Salesforce Classic.
Comparing Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic
Understanding what you get in the new interface is a big part of the decision to switch to Lightning Experience. We give you some highlights of how Lightning Experience compares with what you’re used to in Salesforce Classic, including features that are available in the new interface only.
Note
This isn’t a comprehensive list of supported and unsupported features. For a more detailed list, see the Salesforce Help.
Salesforce Data
| Feature | Lightning Experience | Salesforce Classic |
|---|---|---|
Sales data for:
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| Calendar, Events, Tasks | |
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Service data for:
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| Custom objects | |
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| Chatter feeds, groups, and people | |
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| Salesforce Files | |
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| Other Sales and Service objects | |
Home
An intelligent page filled with insights, a slick performance chart, and a helpful assistant feature, highlighting what’s most important each day.
| Feature | Lightning Experience | Salesforce Classic |
|---|---|---|
| Performance chart | |
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| Assistant | |
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| News | |
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| Key deals | |
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| Tasks | |
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| Events1 | |
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| Calendar1 | |
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| Feed and publisher | |
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| Items to approve | |
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| Customizable dashboards | |
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| Customizable home page components | |
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1 In Lightning Experience, Home show events remaining on a user's calendar today. Users can access all their events from the Calendar tab in the navigation bar.
Accounts and Contacts
Sales and service reps get a layout designed to help them find the information they need, fast.
| Feature | Lightning Experience | Salesforce Classic |
|---|---|---|
| News | |
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| Path | |
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| Activity timeline | |
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| Contacts to Multiple Accounts | |
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| Account Logos | |
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| Automated Account Fields | |
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| Notes | |
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| “Reference” page layout | |
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| Related lists | |
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| Integrated email and templates | |
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| Twitter highlights | |
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| Person accounts | |
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| Account teams | |
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| Account hierarchy | |
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| Contact hierarchy | |
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| Find and merge duplicate accounts and contacts | |
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| Matching and duplicate rules for business accounts, person accounts, and contacts | |
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Opportunities and Leads
Sales reps in Lightning Experience find a turbo-charged workspace for managing opportunities and leads. View related information in the Quick View. Create tasks and events, log calls, and send emails, and track all those activities in the Activity Timeline.
Opportunities
| Feature | Lightning Experience | Salesforce Classic |
|---|---|---|
| Workspace page layout | |
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| Activity timeline | |
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| Path | |
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| Notes | |
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| Visual view of opportunities (Kanban) | |
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| Integrated email and templates | |
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| Opportunity teams | |
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| Opportunity splits | |
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| Similar opportunities | |
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| Big deal alerts | |
Leads
| Feature | Lightning Experience | Salesforce Classic |
|---|---|---|
| Workspace page layout | |
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| Activity timeline | |
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| Path | |
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| News | |
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| Notes | |
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| Change lead owner to a queue | |
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| Integrated email and templates | |
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| Lead conversion customization via the API | |
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| Find and merge duplicate leads | |
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| Matching and duplicate rules for leads | |
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Kanban View
Sales reps can use the Kanban view, a visualization tool, to review deals organized by each stage in the pipeline. With drag-and-drop functionality, sales reps can move deals from one stage to another, and get personalized alerts on key deals in flight. Kanban is available on opportunities, leads, tasks, and many other objects.
| Feature | Lightning Experience | Salesforce Classic |
|---|---|---|
| Charts | |
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| Drag and drop | |
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| Intelligent Alerts | |
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| Type-ahead list view search | |
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| Sharing settings1 | |
1 Only list views marked as “Visible only to me” or “Visible to all users” are supported. Sharing with certain groups of users isn’t supported.
Data.com
| Feature | Lightning Experience | Salesforce Classic |
|---|---|---|
| Data.com Prospector: Search for companies and import them as accounts | Accessed via the Get More Accounts button on the Accounts list view. You can
filter on the following fields:
To filter on other fields, use a web tab. See Get More Accounts Using Data.com in Lightning Experience. |
Accessed via the Data.com tab or Search Global Ultimate DUNS button on D&B Company records. |
| Data.com Prospector: Search for contacts and import them as contacts | Users can search for a contact when it’s related to an existing account. On the
account detail page, click the Get More Contacts button, and use the search box and
filters. To search for other contacts, use a web tab. See Prospect for Key Contacts in Your Accounts Using Lightning Experience. |
Accessed via the Data.com tab or Get Contacts button on accounts. See Prospect for Key Contacts in Your Accounts Using Salesforce Classic. |
| Data.com Prospector: Search for contacts and import them as leads | Web tab required. | Accessed via the Data.com tab. |
| Data.com Prospector: Export companies or contacts to a .csv file | Web tab required. | Accessed via the Data.com tab. |
| Data.com Prospector: See key company insights on accounts | Accessed via the Get More Insights button on accounts. | Accessed via the Prospecting Insights button on accounts. |
| Data.com Prospector: See key company insights on opportunities | Accessed via the Get More Insights button on opportunities. | Not available. |
| Data.com Prospector: Prospect for accounts within the same corporate hierarchy | On accounts and opportunities, accessed via the Get More Insights button (Data.com Insights component) or via the Company Hierarchy component. | Accessed via the Company Hierarchy button on accounts. |
| Data.com Clean: Administrative settings | Not available. Use Salesforce Classic to administer Clean jobs and configure Clean settings. | Administer Clean jobs, and configure Clean settings. |
| Data.com Clean: Clean accounts with company data | Bulk cleaning: Clean jobs for accounts. Manual cleaning: Available using the Company Info for Accounts data integration rule (Premium Clean required). |
Bulk cleaning: Clean jobs for accounts. Manual cleaning: Clean button on accounts. |
| Data.com Clean: Clean contacts with contact data | Bulk cleaning: Clean jobs for contacts. Manual cleaning: Available using Data.com Contact Clean, a free component from Salesforce Labs on AppExchange. |
Bulk cleaning: Clean jobs for contacts. Manual cleaning: Clean button on contacts. |
| Data.com Clean: Clean leads with contact data | Bulk cleaning: Clean jobs for leads. Manual cleaning: Not available. |
Bulk cleaning: Clean jobs for leads. Manual cleaning: Clean button on leads. |
| Data.com Clean: Clean leads with company data | Available using the Company Info for Leads data integration rule (Premium Clean required). | Not available. |
| Data.com Clean: View and refresh D&B company records | Accessible via a link on an account or lead. A Salesforce Classic tab opens. The tab doesn’t interrupt the user’s Lightning Experience session. | Accessible via a link on accounts or leads and from the D&B Companies tab. |
Collaborative Forecasts
| Feature | Lightning Experience | Salesforce Classic |
|---|---|---|
Forecasting on:
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| Revenue and quantity forecasts | |
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| Product and schedule date forecasts (for the opportunity revenue and quantity forecast types) | |
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| Manager and owner adjustments | |
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| Cumulative forecast rollups | |
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| Support for multiple currencies | |
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| Quotas | |
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| Forecast hierarchy | |
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| Choose the product families to forecast on and the order they appear in (from Setup, if product family forecasts is selected) | |
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| Forecasts grid organized first by period, product family, and then user to show product family forecast totals | |
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| Forecasts grid expansion remains the same during each session | |
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| Adjust your own product family forecasts | |
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| Opportunity split details in the opportunities list | |
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| Adjustable column width | |
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| Quota attainment information | |
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| Jump to the forecasts of users you have access to view | |
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| Forecasts setup | |
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Campaigns
| Feature | Lightning Experience | Salesforce Classic |
|---|---|---|
| Campaign member status charts | |
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| Import campaign members | |
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| Add individual campaign members | |
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| Campaign member status updates via import | |
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| Clone campaign members | |
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| Add and manage campaign members from a list view | |
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| Add campaign members from reports | |
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Salesforce Einstein
| Feature | Lightning Experience | Salesforce Classic |
|---|---|---|
| Analytics | ||
| Einstein Discovery | |
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| Chatter | ||
| Einstein Recommendations | |
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| Community | ||
| Einstein Related Articles | |
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| Einstein Feed Search | |
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| Development | ||
| Einstein Language | |
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| Einstein Vision | |
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| Sales | ||
| Einstein Activity Capture | |
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| Einstein Lead Scoring | |
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| Einstein Opportunity Scoring | |
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| Einstein Forecasting | |
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| Einstein Opportunity Insights | |
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| Einstein Account Insights | |
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| Einstein Automated Contacts | |
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| Service | ||
| Einstein Bots | |
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Customer Service
| Feature | Lightning Experience | Salesforce Classic |
|---|---|---|
| Case Milestones | |
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| Object Milestones | |
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| Service Contracts | |
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Service Setup Flows for:
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| Assets | |
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| Case Assignment Rules | |
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| Console1 | |
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| Entitlements2 | |
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| Field Service Lightning | |
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| Knowledge3 | |
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| Open CTI | |
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| Products | |
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| Snap-ins for Web4 | |
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| Social Customer Service | |
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| Case Comments | |
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| Feed Filters in Case Feed | |
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| Live Agent | |
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| Macros | |
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| Omni-Channel | |
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| Quick Text | |
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| Solutions | |
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| SOS | |
1 The Service Console in Lightning Experience doesn’t yet have full parity with the Service Console in Salesforce Classic. Learn more.
2 There are some limitations using Entitlements in Lightning Experience. Learn more.
3 Lightning Knowledge is recommended for orgs that are new to Knowledge, or for existing orgs that can easily consolidate to one article type, have few data categories, and use single-language mode. Learn more.
4 Setting up Snap-ins Chat is available in Lightning Experience only. However, the snap-in itself can go anywhere on your website.
Reports
Sales and service reps who use reports find an improved user interface, including the ability to easily create filters and add enhanced charts. And Salesforce admins find features on the dashboard editor, including flexible layouts and spanning columns. However, some report features aren’t yet available in Lightning Experience, including feeds and scheduled reports.
| Feature | Lightning Experience | Salesforce Classic |
|---|---|---|
| Enhanced report charts | |
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| Hide totals and subgroups from report view | |
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| Interactive filters when viewing reports | |
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| Report Builder | |
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| Bucket fields | |
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| Custom summary formulas | |
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| Matrix, Summary, Tabular report formats | |
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| Role hierarchy filters | |
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| Create report folders1 | |
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| Joined reports2 | |
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| Pie charts | |
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| Schedule report refreshes3 | |
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| Follow reports | |
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| Report notifications | |
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| Export reports | |
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- 1 Folder sharing setup isn’t available in Lightning Experience. But
folders created in Salesforce Classic inherit all assigned permissions when the
folders are viewed in Lightning Experience.
2Joined reports are beta in Lightning Experience.
3Available in Lightning Experience by subscribing to a report.
Dashboards
| Feature | Lightning Experience | Salesforce Classic |
|---|---|---|
| Display more than 3 columns | |
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| Dashboard Builder | |
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| View filtered dashboards | |
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| View dynamic dashboards | |
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| Schedule dashboard refreshes1 | |
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| Post dashboard components to feeds | |
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| Follow dashboards | |
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| Visualforce components | |
1 Users can’t schedule dashboards in Lightning Experience, but dashboards scheduled in Salesforce Classic run as expected in Lightning Experience. Instead of scheduling dashboards in Lightning Experience, subscribe to them.
List Views
List Views have gotten an upgrade in Lightning Experience, including some super new stuff like the ability to create a quick chart from a list view or add filters with an improved, easy-to-use interface.
| Feature | Lightning Experience | Salesforce Classic |
|---|---|---|
| Charts | |
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| Create filters on the fly | |
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| Search for a list view on the fly | |
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| View records visually (Kanban) | |
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| Create and edit lists | |
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| Sortable columns | |
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| Resizable columns | |
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| Sharing Settings1 | |
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| Filter logic | |
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| Inline editing | |
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1 In Lightning Experience, sharing list views marked as “Visible only to me” or “Visible to all users” is supported. Sharing with certain groups of users isn’t supported.
Other Features and Products
| Feature | Lightning Experience | Salesforce Classic |
|---|---|---|
| Custom org brand images and colors | |
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| Custom branding of Salesforce apps | |
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| Personalized Navigation Bar | |
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| Favorites | |
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| Activities-related composer windows | |
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| Create and edit records | |
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| Inline editing record detail fields | |
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| Inline editing in lists | |
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| Customizable Forecasting | |
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| Enterprise Territory Management | |
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| Original Territory Management1 | |
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| Salesforce Communities2 | |
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| Partner Portals | |
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| Work.com | |
2 To create or disable community users, log in as a community user, and use delegated administration, switch to Salesforce Classic.
Other Features That Aren’t Supported
Note
This isn’t a comprehensive list of supported and unsupported features. For a more detailed list, see the Salesforce Help.
Custom JavaScript Buttons
Custom buttons that use a JavaScript content source aren’t supported in Lightning Experience. Visit Lightning Alternatives to JavaScript Buttons in Trailhead for a great list of Lightning-friendly solutions for your JavaScript button use cases. Or, check out this bundle of sample Lightning components that you can use as Lightning component actions to replace your JavaScript button functionality.
AppExchange Apps with Custom Objects, Visualforce Pages, and More
Many apps from the AppExchange feature customizations, including custom objects, custom buttons, Visualforce pages, and more. Salesforce partners are testing their apps in Lightning Experience and applying for Lightning Ready certification. Apps that are Lightning Ready work in Lightning Experience and offer a more consistent experience with other Lightning Pages. If an app is supported in Lightning Experience, a Lightning Ready sash appears on its AppExchange listing. If an app isn’t supported in Lightning Experience, use it in Salesforce Classic instead.
Note
Your org can use apps without Lightning Ready certification in Lightning Experience, but some features might not be available or work as expected. These apps can also appear visually inconsistent with Lightning Experience because they use Salesforce Classic styling. For the best experience, use Salesforce Classic for apps that aren’t certified as Lightning Ready.
What About Apex and Visualforce?
When we talk about customizing Salesforce “programmatically,” we’re talking about using code to add new features. Most of the time, like when you’re using the API or writing Apex triggers, there isn’t an actual user interface to the feature. Guess what? All of that stuff just works whether you’re in Salesforce Classic or Lightning Experience. Woohoo!
Other features do have a user interface. In that case, we’re mostly talking about Visualforce. Your existing Visualforce pages work in Lightning Experience, many without needing any revisions. Because things have moved around in the new interface, you’ll want to complete some chores to make sure your Visualforce pages work the way you expect.
There are some other considerations for Visualforce pages and apps, and we recommend that you review those. We created an entire Trailhead module just for Visualforce developers, and an entire trail for developing Lightning Experience apps. If you’re using Visualforce or other programmatic customizations in your organization, check out those trails as part of your Lightning Experience evaluation process.
Evaluate Your Org with the Lightning Experience Readiness Check
To evaluate whether some of the key features and customizations you’ve implemented in Salesforce Classic are ready for Lightning Experience, kick off the Lightning Experience Readiness Check. That way, you can learn which are ready now for Lightning Experience and which may need your attention before you switch over all your users.
You’ll get a personalized Readiness Report, with an assessment of the features and customizations evaluated by the Readiness Check and recommendations on your next steps. Plus you’ll be eligible for a free consultation with a Lightning expert to go over the details in your report. The Readiness Check emails the report to you and also saves it to Salesforce Files.
Curious what exactly is covered in the report? Check out What Does the Lightning Experience Readiness Check Evaluate? in the Salesforce Help.
Run the Readiness Check from the Lightning Experience Migration Assistant. From Setup in Salesforce Classic, click Get Started in the Migration Assistant tile (1). On the Check Readiness tab in the Migration Assistant (2), click Check Readiness (3).
We’ve also put together an enablement pack with sample documents and templates, including a gap analysis checklist. You can use this checklist to expand your evaluation to features and customizations that aren’t covered by the Readiness Check.
Best Use Cases for Lightning Experience
If you’ve gone through the list of supported features and you’ve done an evaluation of how ready your org’s features and customizations are for Lightning Experience, then you’re probably starting to get a sense of when you’ll want to enable the new Salesforce interface. But if you’re still not sure, here’s one last comparison chart.
| Lightning Experience might be right for some or all of your org if: | Salesforce Classic might be right for you if: |
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Preview Your Org in Lightning Experience
It’s all well and good to talk about use cases and supported and unsupported features. But wouldn’t it be great if you could see your Salesforce org in Lightning Experience without having to enable the new interface? Even if you don’t have a sandbox org? Well, the great news is you can, using the Lightning Experience Migration Assistant. The Migration Assistant’s Preview feature lets you explore your production org in Lightning Experience, so you can see exactly how your real data and your current customizations work in the new interface. And helpful hint, the Preview is a great way to review the state of features and customizations that aren’t evaluated by the Lightning Experience Readiness Check.
The Preview feature isn’t a locked-down, read-only tour. You can change data, settings, permissions—you name it. But remember that you’re working with your live org. If you do make changes, they’re for real and visible to your users back in Salesforce Classic.
To get started, from Setup in Salesforce Classic, click Get Started in the Lightning Experience Migration Assistant tile at the top of the menu. On the Preview tab in the Migration Assistant, click Preview to dive in.
