How to Get Ready for Salesforce Lightning

By Keri Fadden June 10, 2019

Astro Did you catch the important announcement in the Critical Updates section of the Spring ‘19 release notes? The note announced that “Salesforce will turn on Lightning Experience on a rolling basis starting in Winter ‘20.” (UPDATE: This date has since been changed to January 7, 2020.).If this left you scratching your head (or starting to panic), we want to clarify a few things.

First, know that you will still get to control who gets access to Lightning in your Salesforce instance. That means, yes, Classic will still be accessible to your users. But the fact that Lightning will be turned on in all orgs also means that you shouldn’t ignore Lightning very much longer. It’s important to begin the transition to Lightning today, and that starts with educating yourself about what Lightning is and begin making a transition plan using the resources available to you.

So let’s dig deeper into what this Critical Update actually means, and discuss how you can start taking steps to transition to Lightning.

“What exactly is going to happen during this critical update?”

Salesforce will turn on Lightning Experience on a rolling basis starting on January 7, 2020 for all orgs with Supported Editions and User Licenses for Lightning Experience.

After the update, all users with the Lightning Experience User permission enabled can switch between Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic. This includes all users with standard profiles as well as users with custom profiles or permission sets that have the Lightning Experience User permission enabled by an admin. This means that access to Salesforce Classic will remain.

“Are we being forced to move to Lightning?”

No! The Critical Update is not a forced transition to Lightning. All customers will still have the option of switching back to Classic, and through the use of custom profiles and permission sets, system administrators have the option of not showing Lightning at all to users until you’re ready. You have total control over users who get access to Lightning.

Can Switch Between Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic	Stays in Salesforce Classic
Standard Profiles	Custom Profiles without the Lightning Experience User Permission
Custom Profiles with the Lightning Experience User Permission
Permission Sets with the Lightning Experience User Permission

“Why is this happening?”

While Salesforce is not forcing customers to switch to Lightning, it’s important to note that the future of the Salesforce user experience and platform is Salesforce Lightning. Moving forward, all innovations will be in Lightning Experience. Customers who have transitioned to Lightning Experience achieve higher productivity through reimagined Salesforce Classic features and the many Lightning Experience Only Exclusive Features.

With all its new features and redesigned pages, there are many key benefits to using Lightning Experience. We can’t cover everything in this post, but here are some of the highlights:

Efficient navigation and the ability to switch between custom-branded apps
Quick access to productivity tools like Notes and Recent Items in the utility bar
New record layouts that focus on what you can do instead of what you can view
Turbocharged list views that let you easily filter and visualize your data
Beautiful dashboards with components that span both columns and rows
Sleek report views that you can filter quickly to see the data that’s most important to you

Lightning dashboards

“What do we need to do to be ready?”

You can take advantage of the built-in lead time before Lightning Experience is turned on to understand how your organization’s existing features and customizations work in the new interface and to prepare your users. Start by checking out the Lightning Experience Transition Assistant in setup. There you can learn about Lightning, evaluate your own organization’s transition readiness, and roll Lightning out to your users. In addition, throughout the summer we will be posting materials to help you learn more about the new features available to you with the Lightning Experience, along with stories about nonprofits and higher ed institutions that have already made the transition.

Process flow

With all these resources at your disposal, you shouldn’t fear the transition to Lightning. Before the Critical Update goes into effect, take the time to get to know more about Lightning and understand the steps you can take to be in control of this transition. In fact, there is no reason to wait until October to turn on Lightning. You can turn Lightning on for yourself today and get ahead of the curve. Read the resources below, ask questions in the Power of Us Hub, and soon enough, you’ll be well on your way towards working in Lightning!