Admins – Musings on Catching a Lightning Bug

Aw, here we go. With the announcement of Salesforce Lightning Experience, the ‘force has succeeded in dazzling us once again.

If you are a Salesforce Admin, here are some things to consider when it comes to Lightning:

Hit the Trailhead

Time to hit the Trailhead! On the Trailhead site, choose the middle road: “Admin Trail – Migrating to Lightning Experience” and check out the terrain on your lunch hour over the next few days. Those who badge up on Lightning will be given preferential status for pre-release access.

Trailhead does a great job introducing you to all the features and they show you screenshots that I don’t have access to yet.

If Site.com and the Salesforce Console Had a Baby …

The new interface may remind some users of a Salesforce Console because of the contextual displays. These layouts vary, depending on which of the new vertical tabs you have selected. The way related records are shown — based on the selected record — will make an Admin think of “Mini Page Layouts.”

The Home tab includes next steps, a customizable tracker, and Account Insights from top accounts; the Opportunity tab includes quick links to activities, related records, and a more intuitive stage progress bar (“Pipeline Board”); Accounts & Contacts let you see related Twitter and Account Insights, as well as related Cases, Custom Objects, and a new Notes interface.

They are taking Chatter off the Home Page. Well, maybe. It’s not on the new Lightning Home Page yet. Here’s to leaving it off, Salesforce. I hide it on all my tabs except for the Chatter tab. That’s enough Chatter for this Salesforce fan.

The Lightning App builder allows the building of custom apps using all these new components and the drag-and-drop interface will remind users of Site.com.

More Dynamic Views

With Lightning, List Views are now sorted by the most frequently viewed Views, and allow you to dynamically search for Views. Lightning also provides drop-down filters directly on Views, while displaying the results in a graphic component to the right of the list. At this time, there is 樂威壯
no filter logic.

Other views allow one-click task closing. Enhanced Notes are rich-text notes that you can enter without clicking a separate button to save. No more lost notes! I have seen many customers try to duplicate this piece of Lightning functionality of maintaining a separate list of notes while being able to click through each note’s detail. Just add the Notes related list to each object’s page layouts once you roll out Lightning, and this is now done for you!

Voting on Ideas Matters!

With Lightning, you will be able to add up to nine columns to your dashboards. I mean, that’s just posh.

This feature was based on an idea on the Idea Exchange. I had to check it out myself after Shawna Wolverton (VP of Product Management) said it had “80,000 votes.” Do you visit the Idea Exchange regularly to vote up ideas you want to see or add your own?

Showing Sales Some Love

A lot of work went into capturing what the Sales Process is really like for Sales teams. Salesforce did some listening. With features like the Pipeline Board, which contains all of a Rep’s Opportunities, grouped vertically by Sales stage, Sales teams will spend less time pulling up records. Right on the page, Opportunities can be dragged and dropped to another stage. Moving the Opportunities dynamically recalculates the pipeline: slick.

I really appreciated the ability of a company to include their own Sales directives for the selected Stage. One more elegant way to add customization, ownership, and focus.

Reps can see alerts on a deal which doesn’t have an open Task (or does have an overdue Task). Hover over the alert for a popup from which you can quick-create activities. Directly on the screen.

Roll-Out Recommendations

Once Lightning is in general release, if you are on Enterprise edition or higher, you’ll be able to switch between the “Lightning” and “Classic” view. If you’re in Professional or Group Edition, though, you won’t. Once you turn it on, it’s on for everyone for good.

Kind of like Windows 8. Resistance is futile. Decide when you will embrace the new, left-tabbed, visually-driven Lightning interface … but embrace it you will.

For Enterprise and up, when you are ready to get started with Lightning (some features go-live October 17), I recommend you use a permission set to roll it out to a pilot group. That way, you can include exactly the users you want, including your early adopters, or a specific team, particularly Sales. If you are using standard profiles, be aware that enabling Lightning Experience makes the interface selectable for any standard profile users.

To Catch a Lightning Bug

This blog isn’t meant to be a comprehensive list of Lightning features. There will be plenty of those. Rather, it is intended to spark you thinking about how to get in the game as an Admin, explore the features that are coming, keep adding to the conversation (with your Ideas!), and build out a pilot team of Lightning users.

If you don’t have a developer org, get one now. They’re free and allow you to build and test out new features as they are released.

I watched the Salesforce live broadcast with my small but fierce Tucson User Group in one of their office conference rooms. We waited patiently for a browser I won’t name to show the broadcast before switching to a browser that worked. And not since I walked into the Moscone Center in 2009 with a pair of Chatter teeth on every seat have I had such a wow! moment.

If you missed the broadcast, here’s a playback.