If you have any doubts on the status of Lightning Experience as the impending future, you should read the last 2 or 3 sets of release notes. With each release comes an increasing number of new features that are Lightning specific or announcements to additional parity between Classic and Lightning.
Fewer and fewer new features are coming out for Classic. Which I interpret as, get ready to switch, because eventually Classic won’t get any new updates.
If that isn’t enough of a clue, Salesforce is adding a new feature that allows admins to prevent users from switching back and forth between the two experiences, essentially forcing users to stay in Lightning and get used to it.
I also read that as Salesforce is more confident now in Lightning and its level of parity with Classic. They don’t feel that you need to switch back and forth anymore. Which is great.
While there are still of lots of adjustments and improvements to Lightning for Sales Cloud, they are getting fewer and fewer, and the announcements about feature parity are more fringe functionality that isn’t as widely used. Lately, the bulk of the changes have been more around Service Cloud and Community Cloud leading me to believe that development efforts are spreading out more and more to other clouds. Which is great news for those that use Salesforce for more than just Sales.
Another big move is a significantly improved migration assistant that will review your Classic implementation and assess whether or not you’re ready to migrate.
The Readiness Check provides actionable advice for preparing your Salesforce Org for Lightning Experience. It provides specifics on preparing Sales and Service Console and Salesforce Knowledge, as well as roadmap and usage data for several Service Cloud features.
Even if you’ve run the Readiness Check before, they are constantly adding to the list of features and customizations that you can evaluate, even between releases.
I think this all wonderful. They are focusing predominantly on Lightning, providing a tool to assess your readiness and help you prepare for the switch, and confident enough that they offer a way to prevent you and your users from reverting back if you want.
But the fact that they are constantly adding lists of features and customizations you can check for makes me stop and wonder “how do I really know if I’m ready when the assessment isn’t checking all the features, what features isn’t it checking that I need?” Legitimate questions if you didn’t implement your Salesforce instance yourself.
Not just that, but even though I read every release, and it’s admittedly hard to keep track of what is and isn’t in Lightning, I’m always surprised when they announce something for Lightning that wasn’t already there. For example, creating report folders in Lightning. It’s been almost a year and half and something like that just made it’s way to Lightning now. I don’t want to dig on Salesforce since it is a great tool, and Lightning is a massive undertaking with undeniable potential but it just underscores my continued reservations for switching.
Nothing I’ve seen so far tells me with 100% certainty that now is the time. I do advocate to start checking your readiness, play around with the new interface if you feel so inclined. You are undoubtedly going to find things you love about it. And start mentally preparing yourself for the switch. For those of you out there afraid to switch. Don’t worry, I think you have another year or two before you’ll be forced to do so.
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