The Future of Salesforce Lightning UI

Salesforce Lightning Experience

Salesforce released their new user interface last year at Dreamforce, sharing the details of the product and information about the future roadmap for Salesforce with the attendees.

Lightening UI is a desktop version of Salesforce1 and is designed to be a tool for sales reps, structured with the purpose of guiding them through the appropriate actions, step by step, in order to close a deal.

The home page shows how you are progressing towards your goals, summarizing your progress via the dashboard. Your “Assistant” is to the right of the dashboard and lists everything that is assigned to you and requires your attention: tasks, leads, and so on.

Little yellow triangles will direct your experience through

out the entire process.   The strategic placement of flagged items that need your attention is designed to indicate where you may need to take action.

Although Lightning UI was released in October  2015, the product may not currently have all of the features you need to run your business. At Dreamforce, attendees also learned about some future enhancements. Please see the Safe Harbor statement from Salesforce before making any purchasing decisions based on the following information.

The following is a detailed list of the upcoming additions to Salesforce Lightning UI:

Core Sales

• Add multiple products to an opportunity: This addition will increase the efficiency for sales teams in many companies.  In the current platform it is only possible to add one product to an opportunity at a time.
• Enhanced UI for sales teams and opportunity contacts: In order to make managing “related lists” much easier, future implementations will enable sales teams and opportunity contacts to use the same UI.  This will be released for adding multiple products to the opportunity as well.
• Forecasting with wave charting and custom fiscal years: At the top of the list of desired enhancements for forecasting is the integration of wave charting to the sales forecast, which will provide great visuals for the forecasting module. 
• Linking contacts to multiple accounts: Depending on the industry, you may need to link a contact with multiple accounts – for example, doctors who work at various hospitals.  This will be possible in the future.
• Support for campaigns: The initial release of the product does not allow for the support of multiple campaigns, so when you access a campaign you will be reverted into the Salesforce “Classic” UI.  It is expected that in the future, campaigns will be fully supported in Lightning UI.

Salesforce Lightning Productivity

• Customizable home page: The initial release does not allow for any customization of the home page.
• User personalization: Users will have some ability to tailor their UI to meet their own needs.
• Inline editing: Sadly, this is not currently supported, but is expected to be in the near future.
• Email integration into the sales process: There are lots of components to this enhancement but two of the biggest are:
  • Send email via Office 365 and Gmail: This means that while in Salesforce, when you send an email, it will attach as an activity to the object in Salesforce but will be sent out via your email server.  Any replies will come back to your work email account, not directly to Salesforce! While we’re not yet sure of the particulars, the new functionality could be huge. No longer will sales reps have to remember to add an email to Salesforce. Instead, it will happen automatically, and yet sales reps will still have a full record in their email accounts.
  • “Docked” email composer: You can start an email, navigate to a different object, come back and the email will still be in process. You will not lose it if you get interrupted!

Mobile

• Offline editing: Edit your Salesforce records while not connected to Salesforce and save them when you are able to reconnect. You’ll be able to stay productive while flying without having to pay for WiFi on the airplane!
• Push notifications: Have your mobile device notify you when events need attention.
• New dashboards: Use some of the new dashboard capability on your mobile device.

There is lot to get excited about with this new Lightning experience. We can’t wait get it in our production environment!

Since Salesforce Winter 16 has been released into production, it’s the perfect time to review your solution and ensure that you’re taking full advantage of Salesforce’s latest enhancements. Contact the experts at Demand Solutions Group to learn about our Optimize service. With DSG Optimize, you can rest assured that you’re always getting the maximum value out of Salesforce for your specific business needs.

Let DSG match you up with the right solution for your business, and we will help you evaluate how the cloud might make sense for you.  Call us at 866.486.4064 or fill out our contact us form.

About DSG:

DSG delivers cloud accelerated business solutions based on leading ERP, CRM, and CPM applications NetSuite, Salesforce™, and Adaptive Insights. With our deep business and technology expertise and the experience gained from hundreds of successful projects, DSG is acknowledged as one of the leading cloud business solutions providers by our major business partner, NetSuite, and by cloud media and analysts such as IDC and CRN.

Since 2005, hundreds of companies—from start-ups to the Fortune 500—have worked with DSG and benefited from our proven Realize, Optimize and Revitalize methodologies. The DSG experts are proud to implement tailored NetSuite, Salesforce™, and Adaptive Insights solutions that deliver value, insight and business acceleration, starting on day one.

A previous version of this blog was posted http://www.demandsolutionsgroup.com/salesforce-lightning-a-look-into-the-future/ by John Flint on September 30, 2015

Stock image provided by fantasita at  freedigitalphotos.net