Recently, we have wrapped up a couple of Salesforce Classic to Lightning projects and thought of writing this article to share the experience and lessons learnt from it.
Salesforce Classic users have been among our premier clients in IT Service Industry for more than a decade. The main line of business is to provide cloud, cybersecurity, and managed services to large enterprises.
One of the main reasons they waited so long to move to Salesforce Lightning is user adoption. Their existing helpdesk support team was well-versed in Salesforce Classic, and it would be a learning curve for everyone to move to Salesforce Lightning.
Let’s talk about How we successfully migrate them to Lightning.
What is Salesforce Lightning?
Lightning is an open-source framework from Salesforce that has a host of new features. While classic emphasizes the responsiveness of the desktop or mobile application, Lightning does away with this barrier and thus opens a new avenue of potential opportunities for developers. Also, there are three core benefits of having a full view of every customer:
- The GUI interface, drag and drop features, and reusable components can quickly assist in development.
- With the ease of use, developers can better help automate processes and workflows without getting involved in coding.
- You get the option to design your objects relationship in the data model visually.
Why migrate?
Lightning provides lots of features that improve the productivity and overall development of the business as well. It is much faster and lighter than the classic. Salesforce has recently announced that classic will be phased out soon for more details, which will force users to move to Lightning. All new orgs are automatically getting defaulted to Lightning. To be aligned with Salesforce, we would like to carry our Org from Classic to Lightning.
Significant Benefits of Lightning are: –
- The new user interface is streamlined and consolidated for a better user experience.
- Home Page is much more customizable.
- Views are smart. Provides Kanban view to manage Opportunities easily.
- Dashboards aren’t restricted to just three columns!
- Drag-and-drop status changes make “working” an Opportunity even easier.
- The use of Salesforce Einstein easily achieves sales & Marketing forecasts.
- Lightning App Builder to customize and make pre-made reusable components.
Framework for Lightning Transition: –
Risk
Even though migrating to Lightning has many advantages, there are still risks that need to be analyzed. Let’s talk about it.
- If some org has heavy customization, then it will increase manual work to migrate to Lightning.
- Salesforce lighting has introduced new features which require better understanding to get a grip over it, as well classic users may face trouble adopting it.
- Some of the features that are present in classic are not available in Lightning. For Example
- Rich Text Notepad: – New Lighting Notepad does not support html code.
- Functionality to store a file: You cannot keep your notepad file and file in the same place.
- There was no way to add a hyperlink, and we will have to provide it by customization.
- Lots of quick action buttons need to be added manually: – Send mail and your custom button, Etc.
- Classic Email Template: – In Lightning, you must use Classic Email templet because lighting Email Template has less functionality
Analysis
One should always check all the classic org what impact the team will face by group migrating to Lightning and how much customization will need. One also needs to prepare a workaround about the functions and features which does not support in Lightning.
Lightning Readiness check
we analyze how much our org is prepared for the transition to Lightning Experience by running the Lightning Experience Readiness Check, and we find that:
- Convert javascript button to quick action button.
- Visual force page to LWC component.
- Redesign classic home page layout into the lightning page layout.
- Convert classic hardcore URL to lightning URL.
- Verify and upgrade third-party packages.
Implementation
Create Sandbox and Login To Sandbox
- From setup, enter Sandboxes in the Quick Find box, then select Sandboxes.
- Click New Sandbox.
- Enter a name (10 characters or fewer) and description for the sandbox.
- Select the type of sandbox you want.
- Select the data to include in your Partial Copy or Full sandbox.
- Click Create.
- Go to this link to know about sandbox
- Go to Test.saleforcesdotcom
- Use your credential and login to salesforces
Create a Lightening app:
- Go to setup and search for App Manager.
- Click on New Lightning App
- Give App Details & Branding like App name, Developer name, Description Icon or Image and click on Next button.
- Select App Options and click Next:
- Add Utility Items which you want:
- Select Navigation Items:
- Finally, Share the app with the User profile to whom you want to give access and Click on Save and Finish:
Lightning Experience Configuration Converter
This tool will run in a specified org and will analyze and provide a report. What are all needs to be changed to migrate from Classic to Lightning? These +
- JavaScript Buttons and Links
- Actions and Buttons
- Hard-Coded URLs
- Visual force page to LWC component.
- App Exchange Packages
Scan and convert JavaScript Buttons:
- Detected Buttons:
- Converted Java Script Buttons:
- Scan and Move:
Scan and convert for Action and Buttons:
Scan and Convert Visualforce Page:
Scan and Convert Hard-Coded URLs:
AppExchange Packages:
If Org has any AppExchange packages installed, we need to make sure to upgrade them. All the App Exchange apps are now providing a Lightning version of their apps, and we will need to install their latest version, which will bring Lightning version (if the developer has made it available for us)
Not all JavaScript Buttons are converted using this tool. Some of them we must create manually in the lightning app.
Creating manually JavaScript Buttons
Go to any object from the Object Manager, click on the Buttons, Links, and Actions section, and add New action or Button or Link by clicking on the “New Action and “New Button or Link” button.
QA/Testing
- After migration, we manually test each functionality in Lightning
- Checked all layout and design that are at right place
- Checked functionality of All quick action button and hardcoded URL button
- All third-party apps are upgraded and working properly
- Checked security and permissions that are properly assigned to all users
- User Acceptance Testing
Rollout
After completing thorough testing of migration in the sandbox, by using Change Set, we moved the lightning app in production. In addition, we moved all the third-party apps and customized work to production.
Challenges and adoption
While processing and migrating to Lightning from Classic, we had to manually create many functionalities in Lightning that were present in classic but not in Lightning, such as,
- Rich Text Notepad
- Functionality to store a file
- There was no way to add a hyperlink, and we will have to provide by customization
- Lots of quick action buttons need to be added manually
The client was unfamiliar with using the lightning app; we had to make them confirmable by providing demos and user notes.
Conclusion
Migrating from Salesforce Classic to Salesforce Lightning has a considerable advantage for the business as it increases productivity, build process, and develop mobile applications tools with the lightning flow. It boosts employee productivity by quick access to spreadsheets in fewer clicks.
FAQ
-
- How has this affected me? (which edition am I using.)
- What are the benefits of Lightning Experience?
- Is now the time to be moving to Salesforce Lightning?
- Can I still stay on Salesforce Classic?
- Ok, so what do I need to do? I want to keep ahead of the competition. How do I prepare for the change?
