10 Best Practices to Consider When Planning Your Lightning Conversion

Are you planning the conversion to Salesforce Lightning Experience? Start here!

Virsys12’s Randall Hibbard, Chase Shopoff and Luke Higgins have rounded up their top 10 tips for a smooth and successful transition.

  1. Take Advantage of the Lightning Experience Transition Assistant: New tools make it a lot easier to do a successful Lightning conversion than in the past when all you had was a “Get Started” button. Now, the Lightning Experience Transition Assistant breaks it down for you into three phases:
  • Discover: In this phase, you learn about the benefits and return on investment your company gets from adopting Salesforce Lightning and assess your org’s readiness for moving to Lightning Experience. You also have the opportunity to align with stakeholders on transition goals.
  • Roll Out: Here, you’ll develop your rollout plan, turn on key Lightning Experience features and adjust existing customizations. Then you’ll prepare your users for the upcoming change and go live.
  • Optimize: This phase is designed to drive user adoption of Lightning Experience and iterate on the rollout plan with more users, new use cases and continuous improvement. Using Salesforce’s analytics, you can understand who’s using Lightning Experience, how often they’re switching back and forth, what your users like and don’t like, what’s missing and any issues you might need to address.

Two reports will then be generated, unique to your specific org: A Lightning Experience Readiness Report to help you plan your transition and a Lightning Experience Visualforce Report.

  1. Meet with a Lightning Conversion Specialist: Within phase one, Salesforce now offers a 90-minute meeting with a Lightning Conversion Specialist where they’ll walk you through a Visualforce Report start to finish. While they won’t know the specifics of your unique org, they know Salesforce inside out and can provide valuable expertise.
  1. Use the Clean-Up Functionality: A Lightning conversion is a great opportunity to clean up your org and get rid of unused fields and reports. You can even run a Report on Reports, which is a good starting point for optimizing your organization. In some cases when we’ve run this report for clients, we’ve found thousands of reports, the bulk of which have never been used.
  1. Install AppExchange Packages: Search for packages on the AppExchange that will make your life easier, both for the Lightning conversion and for the long run. One free app worth considering is Field Trip, which runs an analysis on an object-by-object basis and gives you an understanding of the number of fields an object has and the quantity of records that field is completed on. That allows you to understand the fields that you could potentially deprecate. Another free app, Field and Picklist Usage, allows you to look for picklist values you haven’t touched in a long time.
  1. Use Magic Mover for Notes & Attachments: Magic Mover is the easiest way to bulk-convert Attachments to Files and Notes to Enhanced Notes. It’s supported for custom objects as well as Account, Asset, Campaign, Case, Contact, Contract, Lead, Opportunity, Product, Quote and Solution. It also updates the Related Lists in Lightning to use the new Related Lists for Files and Notes.
  1. Take Advantage of Lightning Features: In addition to Lightning conversion best practices, there are some specific features that can help you build your case with your stakeholders if you’re trying to provision a Lightning conversion. Here’s an overview of a few that come right out of the box and can help improve productivity, add new functionality or give you better insights from your records:
  • Path Component
    • Normally linear, but can be non-linear
    • Applicable only to picklist fields
    • Admin can provide guidance to the user
  • News Component
    • Can be a List or Carousel
    • Shows news-related to records in org
    • Provides different articles, depending on location in org (e.g., if you place it on a record page, it will display news based on that record)
  • Pin/Unpin List Views
    • Simple functionality that can save a lot of time
    • Allows list views to be consistent
    • Puts more focus on individualistic customization
  • Kanban List Views
    • Allows moving between statuses in real-time
    • Available on most objects
    • Numeric or currency fields can be summarized at the top of view
    • Records can be organized by picklist values or by owner
  1. Lightning App Builder: This is another new feature in Lightning that provides a much more user-friendly experience compared to Classic. Lightning App Builder allows you to drag-and-drop individual components on the screen in any way you like. Flows can be added directly to the page, List Views and Detail Pages can be added anywhere on the page, and different page templates can be used for a completely custom layout.

Lightning App Builder also allows you to maintain the visibility of components at individual levels. Multiple filters can be added, and complex logic can be applied to fit every situation. Additionally, the Record Page Assignment lets you assign custom app, record or home pages to specific people in the org or at the group level.

3 – 2 – 1. Deprecated Features, Realizations and Gotchas: For our final 3, here are some of the common issues you might run into—and how to solve them.

Problem: You’re conducting a training, and one person tells you they can’t see the “Switch to Lightning Experience” link.
Solution: Internet Explorer is not supported by Lightning. Make sure everyone is on a supported browser (i.e., Chrome, Firefox).

Problem: A user tells you all of their Notes are gone.
Solution: In Lightning, Notes and Files are related to the record. So, they’ll appear in the Opportunity, for example, but not the Account. There’s an app in the AppExchange that will allow you to address this. (Either way, though, the Notes are still there!)

Problem: FAQs articles are gone.
Solution: Migrate to Knowledge for Lightning, using the Knowledge Migration Tool in the Setup menu. Note that anything that’s not published or has been soft-deleted won’t move over.

Problem: The sharing button for sharing an individual record is gone.
Solution: There’s an app for that: Lightning Sharing recreates that functionality.

Problem: An activity has been created, but it’s not showing up on the record.
Solution: The new filter button allows users to filter a list of activities. If the user forgets to unfilter the list and the activity doesn’t fall within that range, it won’t show up.

Have challenges or questions about your Lightning conversion? Our Salesforce-certified experts have completed multiple Lightning conversion projects and can make sure your transition goes off without a hitch. Get in touch and get the benefit of their experience.

Are you planning the conversion to Salesforce Lightning Experience? Start here!

Virsys12’s Randall Hibbard, Chase Shopoff and Luke Higgins have rounded up their top 10 tips for a smooth and successful transition.

 

  1. Take Advantage of the Lightning Experience Transition Assistant: New tools make it a lot easier to do a successful Lightning conversion than in the past when all you had was a “Get Started” button. Now, the Lightning Experience Transition Assistant breaks it down for you into three phases:
  • Discover: In this phase, you learn about the benefits and return on investment your company gets from adopting Salesforce Lightning and assess your org’s readiness for moving to Lightning Experience. You also have the opportunity to align with stakeholders on transition goals.
  • Roll Out: Here, you’ll develop your rollout plan, turn on key Lightning Experience features and adjust existing customizations. Then you’ll prepare your users for the upcoming change and go live.
  • Optimize: This phase is designed to drive user adoption of Lightning Experience and iterate on the rollout plan with more users, new use cases and continuous improvement. Using Salesforce’s analytics, you can understand who’s using Lightning Experience, how often they’re switching back and forth, what your users like and don’t like, what’s missing and any issues you might need to address.

Two reports will then be generated, unique to your specific org: A Lightning Experience Readiness Report to help you plan your transition and a Lightning Experience Visualforce Report.

 

  1. Meet with a Lightning Conversion Specialist: Within phase one, Salesforce now offers a 90-minute meeting with a Lightning Conversion Specialist where they’ll walk you through a Visualforce Report start to finish. While they won’t know the specifics of your unique org, they know Salesforce inside out and can provide valuable expertise.

 

  1. Use the Clean-Up Functionality: A Lightning conversion is a great opportunity to clean up your org and get rid of unused fields and reports. You can even run a Report on Reports, which is a good starting point for optimizing your organization. In some cases when we’ve run this report for clients, we’ve found thousands of reports, the bulk of which have never been used.

 

  1. Install AppExchange Packages: Search for packages on the AppExchange that will make your life easier, both for the Lightning conversion and for the long run. One free app worth considering is Field Trip, which runs an analysis on an object-by-object basis and gives you an understanding of the number of fields an object has and the quantity of records that field is completed on. That allows you to understand the fields that you could potentially deprecate. Another free app, Field and Picklist Usage, allows you to look for picklist values you haven’t touched in a long time.

 

  1. Use Magic Mover for Notes & Attachments: Magic Mover is the easiest way to bulk-convert Attachments to Files and Notes to Enhanced Notes. It’s supported for custom objects as well as Account, Asset, Campaign, Case, Contact, Contract, Lead, Opportunity, Product, Quote and Solution. It also updates the Related Lists in Lightning to use the new Related Lists for Files and Notes.

 

  1. Take Advantage of Lightning Features: In addition to Lightning conversion best practices, there are some specific features that can help you build your case with your stakeholders if you’re trying to provision a Lightning conversion. Here’s an overview of a few that come right out of the box and can help improve productivity, add new functionality or give you better insights from your records:
  • Path Component
    • Normally linear, but can be non-linear
    • Applicable only to picklist fields
    • Admin can provide guidance to the user
  • News Component
    • Can be a List or Carousel
    • Shows news-related to records in org
    • Provides different articles, depending on location in org (e.g., if you place it on a record page, it will display news based on that record)
  • Pin/Unpin List Views
    • Simple functionality that can save a lot of time
    • Allows list views to be consistent
    • Puts more focus on individualistic customization
  • Kanban List Views
    • Allows moving between statuses in real-time
    • Available on most objects
    • Numeric or currency fields can be summarized at the top of view
    • Records can be organized by picklist values or by owner

 

  1. Lightning App Builder: This is another new feature in Lightning that provides a much more user-friendly experience compared to Classic. Lightning App Builder allows you to drag-and-drop individual components on the screen in any way you like. Flows can be added directly to the page, List Views and Detail Pages can be added anywhere on the page, and different page templates can be used for a completely custom layout.

Lightning App Builder also allows you to maintain the visibility of components at individual levels. Multiple filters can be added, and complex logic can be applied to fit every situation. Additionally, the Record Page Assignment lets you assign custom app, record or home pages to specific people in the org or at the group level.

3 – 2 – 1. Deprecated Features, Realizations and Gotchas: For our final 3, here are some of the common issues you might run into—and how to solve them.

Problem: You’re conducting a training, and one person tells you they can’t see the “Switch to Lightning Experience” link.
Solution: Internet Explorer is not supported by Lightning. Make sure everyone is on a supported browser (i.e., Chrome, Firefox).

Problem: A user tells you all of their Notes are gone.
Solution: In Lightning, Notes and Files are related to the record. So, they’ll appear in the Opportunity, for example, but not the Account. There’s an app in the AppExchange that will allow you to address this. (Either way, though, the Notes are still there!)

Problem: FAQs articles are gone.
Solution: Migrate to Knowledge for Lightning, using the Knowledge Migration Tool in the Setup menu. Note that anything that’s not published or has been soft-deleted won’t move over.

Problem: The sharing button for sharing an individual record is gone.
Solution: There’s an app for that: Lightning Sharing recreates that functionality.

Problem: An activity has been created, but it’s not showing up on the record.
Solution: The new filter button allows users to filter a list of activities. If the user forgets to unfilter the list and the activity doesn’t fall within that range, it won’t show up.

 

Have challenges or questions about your Lightning conversion? Our Salesforce-certified experts have completed multiple Lightning conversion projects and can make sure your transition goes off without a hitch. Get in touch and get the benefit of their experience.

About the Author

About the Author

Tammy Hawes is CEO and Founder of Virsys12, a Healthcare Focused Salesforce AppExchange and Consulting Partner. Hawes launched Virsys12 in 2011, with a track record of more than 25 years of executive success.

About the Author