Salesforce Lightning Experience was launched in Winter16 release almost 6 months back. And even after that much time i am still clinging on to Classic Experience. When asked why, I used to give away excuses like “I am old fashioned”, or “I am still not used to drastic change”, just to avoid classic vs. lightning debate (and yes there are debates still going in our office). But the crux of the matter is that i haven’t switched to Lightning just because it lacked some of my most used features. There was no support for Forecasting, the force.com based Visualforce sites were not fully supported, it was very tough to give consistence user experience in SFDC and Visualforce pages even after using Lightning components, and many more drawbacks.

The biggest problem for me personally was Lightning’s lack of support for Campaign feature. This was a feature that I was most desperately hoping would be improved in the new release but was instead forgotten all together, which was a big disappointment.

The latest Salesforce Spring ‘16 release however has beta support for campaigns proving the age old saying that every dark cloud has a silver lining. (Though it is not as dark as this intro has begin to sound by now :O )

The New Campaign

The new campaign experience starts with a new tab in the left panel labeled ‘Campaign’ (what else can they name it?). Clicking on it will take you to a list of recently viewed Campaigns listing, just like the standard stuff that Salesforce provides you. But with Lightning based user interface. The difference is noticed from the get go.
Now, once here, you can check the status of campaigns by going to a view and clicking on a campaign, or doing the same action if the campaign is present in the default view.

Creating New Campaign

Creating new campaign is revamped, though the data entered is exactly the same. That was expected because Lightning is mainly a cosmetic upgrade of UI and UX. Creating new campaign is at least faster. The page gives the feel of a Single Page application and though takes a little bit more load time, but once loaded, every action happens fast.

Campaign Page

The campaign page, like all pages, have been revamped completely. The page open on the campaign details page but unlike the previous version where everything was shown in a single view, the Lightning Campaign page is divided into multiple tabs like Activity, Details, and Related, with the latter being the default selected tab.

Managing Members

Member management in SFDC lightning campaign is again disappointment. Maybe they are going to launch more features, but as of now there are only two way to add members:

1. either you can add more members through SFDC data import wizard which is conveniently linked in the bottom of the page, or
2. you can switch to the Salesforce Classic view, which is specifically mentioned in the page.

Yep they are themselves telling you to switch. Like in the classic version you cannot, as of now, create a filtered list of contacts or leads and add them to the campaign, like we do in classic version.
The member view page is also not much better. Though it has better UI and looks good, you cannot change the columns of the list. You are stuck with TYPE, STATUS, FIRST NAME, LAST NAME, TITLE, and COMPANY.

Tracking

The lightning cosmetic change also include some new analytics features. The earlier campaign doesn’t have any graph or data visualization features. The data visualization in form of donuts, are useful in many sense. Updating response type of each lead can be done through member view list.

There is still scope

As a marketer, the campaigns is one of the most used feature for me. So as of now I will still use the classic version and would recommend others to do so. But I am optimistic about the future and hope that Salesfore.com add more features to Campaign in lightning. I am also happy with the new UI and after using it for week or so it kind of grows on you. So Salesforce.com, if you are reading this, good work.

None of us are anymore oblivious of the fact that Salesforce Lightning Experience is a modern, productive user experience designed to multiply the efficiency manifold. It has re-envisioned desktop experience and results in a more productive interface to support sales rep but it’s effect doesn’t etiolate here. It stretches to every aspect of Salesforce Classic and so to Visualforce.

Lightning Experience is a drastic change but it doesn’t imply that Visualforce pages stops working. The Salesforce Spring’16 release includes the beta support for Visualforce in Lightning experience that is production quality but has certain known limitations.

If you are not okay with the Visualforce pages ‘just working’ and you want it to work and appeal the way you want then you should consider the following aspects:

• If the Visualforce pages makes use of JavaScript then Visualforce doesn’t own the entire page in Lightning so it needs to follow some new rules.
• Secondly if it has build in components and it is in sync with the Salesforce classic styling then some re-work needs to be done to match the Lightning Experience.

Having discussed about the limitations here are a few places where you can use Visualforce effectively in Lightning Experience:

• Using App launcher to run a Visualforce Page– You can goto the header of App Launcher and by clicking on the button of more apps you can go to my custom apps. And on clicking my custom apps displays the tabs in that app, including your Visualforce pages. Unlike Salesforce Classic you need to add the Visualforce pages to the tab and the tab to my custom app prior to accessing them from the App Launcher.
• Adding Visualforce Page in Lightning App Builder- On creating a custom app page in Lightning App Builder, you can add a Visualforce page to the page by using the Visualforce component. You need to enable ‘Available for Salesforce mobile apps and Lightning Pages’ for a Visualforce page to make it available.
• Displaying a Visualforce Page within a Standard Page Layout – You can also extend your page layouts by embedding Visualforce pages on them. And it can be used to display completely custom content on a standard page.
• Displaying Visualforce Page using Custom Buttons and Links – JavaScript, URL buttons and links are not supported in Lightning experience but  Visualforce items are supported, you can create new actions in the form of button and links by defining them on an object. The process of defining Visualforce buttons and links is identical to Salesforce Classic.
• Displaying Visualforce Page by Overriding Standard buttons or links – You can override the actions available on an object with a Visualforce page. When the user clicks a button or link that has been overridden, your page displays instead of the standard page.

There are two faces of a coin and so does any change! Some of us are cribbing at the changes but I am sure you have a lot to look forward to and experience the better with Lightning Experience.

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