improveit 360 Classic and Salesforce Lightning Experience

Summary

Enabling the Salesforce Lightning Experience in an improveit 360 Classic environment provides users with a more modern, streamlined, and productivity-focused Salesforce interface. The transition improves navigation, record interaction, list views, search and discovery, personalization, and access to Salesforce’s ongoing platform innovations—all while allowing existing package functionality to remain in place.

Salesforce positions Lightning Experience as its modern desktop experience and notes that new Salesforce innovation is focused there.

Key Benefits of Enabling Lightning Experience

1. Modern, More Intuitive User Experience

Lightning Experience provides a significantly refreshed interface compared with Salesforce Classic. The experience uses clearer visual hierarchy, modern navigation patterns, improved spacing, icons, menus, cards, tabs, and contextual actions. The Prospect Search and Create is now a Utility Item in the lower left Utility Bar. 

For users, this means Salesforce feels more like a modern business application and makes important information and actions easier to identify.

Salesforce continues to evolve this design through the Lightning Design System and newer UI themes such as Salesforce Cosmos.

2. More Efficient Navigation

Lightning Experience introduces a more capable navigation model.

Users can navigate between objects and features using the persistent navigation bar, access other Salesforce applications through the App Launcher, and quickly access frequently used records and lists. 

Navigation can also be personalized. Depending on administrator configuration, users can add and reorder navigation items, so their workspace better reflects how they actually use Salesforce. 

Favorites remain associated with the Salesforce User rather than a specific browser, providing quick access to important information from wherever the user works. 

These capabilities can turn a list view from a simple record list into a more interactive working environment.

3. Better Application Organization and Longevity

Lightning Apps allow Salesforce administrators to organize related objects, pages, and capabilities into purpose-specific applications.

For example, different applications can provide focused experiences for Sales, Service, Operations, or a specific business process.

Lightning Apps can also include customized navigation, branding, Lightning pages, and utility functionality that isn't available in the same way in Classic apps. In the example below, RingCentral has sunset their application for Classic however, using the Lightning Experience, improveit 360 Classic customers can continue to take advantage of the RingCentral for Lightning integration*. 

* Additional App Setup fees apply

4. Improved Access to Recent Records and Common Actions

Lightning navigation isn't limited to simply opening an object's home page.

For supported items, users can access recent records, recent lists, and common actions directly from the navigation bar. This reduces the number of steps required to get back to frequently used information. 

Below the search bar in Lightning Experience returns all related records, simply Hover to see additional information about related records. 

5. More Flexible Working Environments

Lightning supports richer workspace experiences such as Lightning Console applications.

Console experiences can provide capabilities such as workspace tabs, subtabs, split views, and multi-column layouts, helping users work through multiple records while maintaining context.

This can be particularly useful for users who spend significant portions of their day working within Salesforce.

6. Consistency Across Salesforce Applications

Lightning Experience provides a common navigation and design framework across Salesforce applications.

The App Launcher provides a central location for discovering and switching between Salesforce apps and connected applications, while Lightning Apps provide consistent navigation within each workspace. 

7. Greater Personalization

Lightning provides users with more opportunities to tailor Salesforce to how they work.

For example, users can personalize navigation items and create Favorites for frequently accessed information. Administrators can also configure Lightning Apps and record pages around specific business processes and personas.

8. Access to Salesforce's Current and Future Innovation

One of the most important long-term benefits is that Lightning Experience is Salesforce's strategic user experience.

Salesforce explicitly states that its focus is Lightning Experience and that this is where new Salesforce innovation occurs. Features of Salesforce Classic (like the Report and Dashboard Builder tools) will eventually be sunset to make way for newer innovation in the Lightning Report and Dashboard Builder tools. 

Moving to Lightning Experience provides a better foundation for adopting newer Salesforce capabilities over time without requiring those capabilities to be implemented as part of the initial experience switch.

What Users Will Notice: UI/UX Changes

For customers accustomed to Salesforce Classic, these are the changes they are most likely to notice.