Salesforce Spring 16 -Top 16 Features of Lightning Experience

Spring 16 -Top 16 Features of Lightning Experience 

Here’s the list of the some powerful features and enhancements that make Lightning Experience the go-to interface for selling smarter and faster. Use this list to quickly access the details about new feature.

1.Custom Lightning Experience Navigation Menus : 

Custom Lightning Experience navigation menus vastly improve the navigation experience for your users. Before this release, everyone had the same navigation menu and it couldn’t be customized. Now, you can create multiple menus and tailor them for your various types of users such as sales reps, sales managers, and execs. You can add, remove, and move items on the menu so that users can go to the places they use most often with a single click. This feature is available in Lightning Experience only.

2.URL Custom Button and Link Support in Lightning Experience and Salesforce1 :

 Custom buttons and links that define their content source as URL are now supported in Lightning Experience and the Salesforce1 mobile app. This feature was previously available in Salesforce Classic only.

3.Formula Field Support in Lightning Experience : 

Formula fields with hyperlinks and images are now supported in Lightning Experience.You can now click on an external hyperlink in a text formula field, which navigates to the link in another tab. Images added via a text formula field now display correctly in list views and related lists. Images in search results are not supported in Lightning Experience.

4.Add Visualforce Pages to the Lightning Experience Navigation Menu: 

Customize the Lightning Experience navigation menu by adding Visualforce tabs. This capability already exists in Salesforce Classic and the Salesforce1 mobile app. Now you can do it in Lightning Experience.For details of how to customize the Lightning Experience navigation menu, see Custom Lightning Experience Navigation Menus elsewhere in the release notes.

5.Change Owners for More Types of Records in Lightning Experience: Your users can now change record owners for work orders and campaigns, and assign some records, like leads, cases, work orders, and custom objects, to queues in Lightning Experience.

6.List Views: Filter and Customize to Get Data Faster in Lightning Experience (Generally Available) : 

With the ability to create and edit custom list views in Lightning Experience, your reps take advantage of powerful ways to rapidly find relevant data. Now reps can sort and filter their data as in Salesforce Classic, but with the added ability to create on-the-fly filters from Lightning Experience’s intuitive interface.Thisfeature is available in both Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic.

Reps create list views easily by choosing New from List View Controls , then naming the list and setting sharing options. Filters let your reps display records based on criteria they set. Reps have different options depending on the object type. When they add a filter, they specify a field (1) and an operator (2), and then select or enter a value (3). For example, if some reps are planning a trip to San Francisco, they can create a list of accounts to visit by setting a filter where Billing City equals San Francisco. They can further refine the list by filtering by industry type or other fields. 

The Filters panel pops out when your reps create a list view, select Edit Filters from List View Controls, or click . When the Filters panel slides out, reps can see filters and the resulting list data side by side.Your reps can tell at a glance how many records a list view contains, and how they’re sorted and filtered.

7.Home: Keep Tabs on Your Meeting Schedule and Task List : 

Home is now even more of a control center for your sales reps. They can now see upcoming meetings, tasks that are due today, and more information about relevant accounts without leaving the Home page. This feature is available in Lightning Experience only.

Account Insights lets sales reps scroll through insights without leaving the Home page. Reps can also provide feedback on individual insights to improve the relevancy of insights.

1. Upcoming Events shows the next five meetings on a sales rep’s calendar. Past events drop off the list as the day progresses. Click View Calendar to access your full calendar for the day.
2. Today’s Tasks shows the next five tasks due today. Sales reps can mark a task as done with one click, or click View All to go to the task page. The Assistant no longer shows tasks due today or overdue tasks. 

8.Productivity: Take Notes, Add Events and Tasks, and Log Calls from Anywhere in Lightning Experience : 

Lightning Experience users can achieve a whole new level of multitasking with global actions and the new composer window. From the Global Actions menu, it’s easy to jot down a quick note or log a call without switching away from other work in progress.

Access global actions from any page because the Global Actions menu is always available in the header. The menu contains activities-related global actions from the Salesforce1 and Lightning Experience Actions section of the global publisher layout. Specifically, these types of global actions are supported: Log a Call and Create a Record for events, tasks, and notes.

The Lightning Experience activity composer already makes it easy for users to relate notes, events, tasks, and logged calls to a specific record. And now the Global Actions menu adds another dimension with a convenient way to create a note or activity that’s not related to the current page. For example, suppose that a sales rep is working one of her deals when she gets a return phone call from a lead she’s been nurturing. She can log the call right away without navigating elsewhere. She simply clicksin the header, types her comments in the composer window that opens on the page, and relates the call to the appropriate lead record. And then she’s back to her deal, right where she left off. 

9.Activities: Keep Up with the Speed of Business: 

The activity timeline shows all the activities on an opportunity, a lead, an account, or a contact. Now your sales reps can filter out everything but the activity they want to monitor: just calls, tasks, meetings, or emails. This feature is available in Lightning Experience only.

10.List Views: Resize Columns in Lightning Experience

Re size columns in list views to optimize the viewing area of specific fields in the list view. When you resize a column on a list view, the new width is retained on your subsequent reloads for that list view. However, Recently Viewed list views don’t retain new widths when you resize their columns. Column resizing is available on all object home pages, such as for accounts, cases, contacts, leads, and opportunities. On the Opportunity home page, column resizing is available in the grid view but not the board view. The length of the column header label determines the minimum width of the column. 

To use your keyboard for column resizing, press tab until you are at the column divider (1) for the column you want to resize.Then press the left or right key to decrease or increase the column width.

11.Data Import Wizard: Import Data from Some Object Home Pages

Sales reps now save time and clicks when they access the Data Import Wizard directly from certain sales objects home pages.This feature is available in Lightning Experience only.Access the Data Import Wizard from these home pages.

• Accounts
• Contacts
• Leads
• Custom Objects
• Person Accounts

12.Calendar in Lightning Experience: Create a Meeting by Clicking a Time Slot : Now your reps can add a meeting to their calendar with one click.

13.Unresolved Items: Available in Lightning Experience

When Salesforce sends email items it couldn’t assign to records to the Unresolved Items queue, reps can manage those items directly from Lightning Experience. This feature is available in both Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic.Unresolved Items helps reps manage items they’ve added to Salesforce using Salesforce App for Outlook, Exchange Sync,Salesforce for Outlook, or Email to Salesforce.

Reps can access Unresolved Items in Lightning Experience from the top of any page by clicking their avatar, and then clicking Settings|Email|Unresolved Items.

14.Person Accounts: Supported in Lightning Experience (Beta)

Person accounts take the standard business-to-business account model and extend it to include business-to-consumer sales, so you can capture information about individual people with whom you do business. With person accounts now available in Lightning Experience, Salesforce supports your sales process like never before. This feature is available in both Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic.

15.Team Up to Close Deals in Lightning Experience

Your sales reps can now increase and simplify a sales team’s access to opportunities by putting together a winning opportunity team in Lightning Experience. Opportunity team members have increased access to the opportunity and its related records.The opportunity team related list shows who’s on the team (1). ClickView All to view more team members.

Remark:Settings for opportunity teams aren’t yet available in Lightning Experience. Switch to Salesforce  Classic to enable team selling, customize team roles, or to access default opportunity teams.

16.Inline Editing Available for Lightning UI 

Now Inline Editing is available for lightning user interface.

There are many more powerful features in Spring 16 Release notes. For complete list of Spring 16 Release Notes click here