Advice for Rolling Out Salesforce Lightning

By: Sarah M. Capps, Cloud Support Specialist, Cloud for Good

It wasn’t that long ago that I was working for an organization that was still in…Salesforce Classic! After attending a local Lightning Now Tour, we quickly discovered that a migration to the Lightning Experience was the best decision for our organization.

Making the decision to move to Lightning was incredibly exciting. We’d get to benefit from all the newest features right away, and automatically benefit from all future releases and enhancements. However, the journey from start to finish can be overwhelming, especially if you are a solo admin like I was.

The good news is, you are not alone! Salesforce has created high-quality tools and resources to help in the journey from moving your organization from Classic to Lightning Experience – assisting in everything from planning the timeline to a stakeholder communication strategy.

To supplement the resources provided in the Lighting Transition Experience, Salesforce provides the Lightning Experience Enablement Pack, which contains a variety of resources to further guide the planning and scheduling of your Lightning Experience rollout. Believe me when I say, this tool was invaluable in my organization’s switch to Lightning.

The Lightning Experience Enablement Pack made it so much easier to manage our transition. Here are a few of my favorite highlights:

Sample Project Schedule

As a solo admin tasked with moving my ENTIRE org over, a project schedule quickly became my most critical document. Luckily, using insights from organizations that have already made the transition from Classic to Lightning, Salesforce provides a sample project schedule complete with an associated task list. The sample schedule can help you budget how long it will take for the move.

I used this Sample Project Schedule to work with my organization’s executive team to define a timeframe that worked with everyone and map out the coming weeks. The schedule also provided important information regarding the necessary order of operations for enabling new features and updating Lightning Record Pages.

Lighting Experience Overview Presentation

When it came time to announce the move to Lightning to my organization, one thing that was important was making sure user adoption was high. Cue the Lightning Experience Overview Presentation. This presentation includes an overview with screenshots and training resources. This presentation not only helped save me a lot of time, but it also helped me deliver the information in an easy way for my users to absorb. The best part? It is fully customizable. I was able to update many of the screenshots with ones from my sandbox to give an idea of what it would like for users in our organization.

Sample Drip Email Campaign

During this transition, consistent communication with stakeholders was key for project success. The Sample Drip Email Campaign included in the Enablement Pack is an excellent resource to help engage and train your users, especially if you are championing the move on your own. Within the pack, there is a different email template to send each day leading up to the switch that includes reading material, Trailhead Trails and videos. Each of these learning resources meets a variety of learning styles—another key to project success!

For my move, I was able to use these emails to help protect my own time as well. I did not have enough time to meet 1-1 with each user and train them in the new features of Lightning. By sending them training resources leading up to the launch, I was able to host post-move trainings instead, focusing on the items that were unique to our organization rather than Lightning in general. Additionally, I was able to customize certain templates that were not relevant to all users. For example, my sales team received information on the updates to opportunities, while my customer service team received information on the updates to cases.

Sample drip email campaign

Additional Resources in the Enablement Pack

In addition to the items mentioned above, the Lightning Experience Enablement Pack also contains:

• Sample Gap Analysis Checklist
• Sample Risk Severity Matrix
• Change Impact Assessment Template
• Change Management Strategy Template
• Change Management Strategy
• Change Readiness Assessment Survey Template
• Customizable User Training Deck
• Sample Test Plan
• Sample Executive Summary

Not everyone will need to use everything that is provided – only use what you need and don’t overwhelm yourself. Additionally, the pack is constantly being updated. There are new things in the pack now that were not available when I made the move, so make sure you download the most current version of the Lightning Experience Enablement Pack. You can also check out a recent webinar where I go into more detail about my experience making the switch.

From my experience, leveraging the Lightning Experience Enablement Pack made my organization’s moves from Classic to Lightning Experience bite-sized and manageable (even for an admin-team of one). The move is worth it, but go easy on yourself and use the resources developed from years of Lightning Experience migrations to help you in the transition. I promise you’ll thank me later.

Ready to get going? Take the next step by joining an upcoming Lightning Bootcamp.

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About the Author
Sarah M. Capps, Cloud Support Specialist, Cloud for Good, was introduced to Salesforce in 2016 and fell in love with the platform. Since then, she became a certified Administrator, Jitterbit Foundation certified, presented at Dreamforce twice, has started a User Group in Greenwood Village, Colorado and is a Lightning Champion. Sarah has an online higher education background including a Master’s in Education from the University of Illinois at Champaign Urbana and over six years of experience as a Learning Technologist. Originally from the Chicago area, Sarah now enjoys the Colorado mountains with her husband, two sons, two dogs, cat, and ball python.