The Road to Lightning Experience

Have you seen the new Lightning Experience? If not take a tour here. It’s amazing, and from and Admin perspective it’s incredibly simple to enable. Literally you just flip a switch. But it’s more than just flipping a switch, yelling surprise, and throwing confetti. As Salesforce Admins we are the business leaders that need to guide our companies through the Lightning Experience rollout. In order to do that we need to start on our path of learning, getting hands-on, and engaging with our users.

Learning

Our first step in that journey begins with Trailhead. Trailhead is a fun and easy way to learn Salesforce fast. And Trailhead is for everyone! We have Admin Trails for Beginners so that you can learn about data modeling and UI customization. We have Trails for Intermediate admins where you can learn about data security, process automation, and Formula and validations. And we have a new CRM trail to help you learn the basics of CRM- including accounts, contacts, leads and opportunities. A great way for your users to understand Salesforce

But we didn’t stop there…

We have BRAND NEW Lightning Trails and Badges for Admins & Users! The Migrating to Lightning Experience Trail will help you understand migrating from Classic to the new Lightning Experience- and can you believe Admins have earned over 50,000 Lightning Badges! And trailhead is there to help you train your users on Lightning as well with a Sales rep Trail. Imagine supplementing all of your training aids with Trailhead!

So Trailhead is where we learn but how do we get started?

Getting Hands-on

We get started with our Admin Playground. This is a great way to learn salesforce in a safe environment- one that isn’t your company’s org. You can learn by getting hands-on! And by connecting your Admin Playground to Trailhead you can share your accomplishments with your friends and colleagues when you earn those badges and points. The Admin Playground allows you complete trailhead challenges, try out the new Lightning Experience when Winter 16 launches.

Engaging with Users

Our third step in the journey is to engage with our users.  If you haven’t already- set up chatter groups for feedback. I like to have 1 main group for all of my users and I call it “Salesforce Support”. There my users can ask questions, and I can gather feedback. You can also set up a group for your super users to provide feedback on Lightning Experience.

As Admins we aren’t always stuck behind a desk. We have to be in meetings to gather new business requirements or maybe we have a decent commute to work. With SalesforceA I can administer salesforce on the go. SalesforceA allows me to take notes and post tips to Chatter while I’m on the go.

And my favorite step in engaging with users is called SABWA- Salesforce Administration by walking around. What I like to do is each morning is stop by and spend a few minutes with a user and chat over coffee.

Get Ready for Confetti

Your Road to the Lightning Experience began with the Lightning Launch. This is a 3-6 month process. It doesn’t happen overnight. Our journey begins as we use Trailhead to learn more. And today you can get hands on in an Admin Playground and start using the Lightning Design System to build beautiful apps. That way you can engage with your users and use our Migrating your org to start preparing your users which will lead you to a successful roll out. And be sure to buy confetti for launch day.
Personally, I like this kind– it’s slow falling.