When I first investigated rolling-out Lightning, numerous things came to mind. What benefits does Salesforce Lightning bring over Classic? How do I communicate these and roll it out across the business? How do I prepare users for the change and address any concerns? How do I monitor rollout? Certainly, more than enough topics to write many blog posts!
Fortunately, there are various tools available. The ‘Lightning Experience Transition Assistant’ (accessible via Setup) contains a wealth of resources, divided into three categories:
- Discover: Lightning’s features, benefits, readiness, planning and how to communicate with stakeholders
- Roll-out: Educate users, implement and launch Lightning
- Optimize: Collating feedback, measuring usage and improve
Beyond this, there is Trailhead, Webinars, and the experiences of the Trailblazer community. In short, there has never been a better time to move or optimise Lightning within your business.
However, I want to focus on the ‘Lightning Usage App’; a tool I still find useful.
What is the Lightning Usage App?
Rolling out Salesforce Lightning is not the end of a journey. In many respects, it is the beginning. You soon realise there are an abundance of new features available, which increase with each release. Gaining insights into how users are interacting with Lightning is essential to see what will add the most value.
The Lightning Usage App, accessible via Setup, provides a quick and easily understandable resource to quantify Lightning usage. This is broken down into several areas:
The details of the options are outlined in this Salesforce Help and Training article. Each section provides useful indicators like switches, whether total or unique from Lightning to Classic and page load speeds. In short, the Lightning Usage App is a user-friendly resource to help admins and developers better understand the needs of their users.
What value does the Lightning Usage App bring?
The power of the Lightning Usage App is the variety of metrics available, which used together can provide actionable insight. For example, tracking switches from Lightning to Classic at a profile and page level helps identify where and when switches occur. At a user level, it can also identify the ‘who’. This can be useful for identifying if one specific user is encountering difficulties, or an entire team; informing the choice of strategy needed to best help.
Does the Lightning Usage App provide everything I need to measure adoption?
The Lightning Usage App provides the who, what, and where clearly within a handful of screens. It does not necessarily provide ‘why’. Granted, if you find that users frequently change to Classic on a specific page, or struggle more with a specific browser, then ‘why’ can be inferred. However, without ‘richer’ information, this may result in misinterpretations.
In my case, I found using the Lightning Usage App worked most effectively during Lightning transition when coupled with:
- ‘Switch to Salesforce Classic User Feedback Form’ was enabled (Setup | User Engagement | Adoption Assistance | Switch to Salesforce Classic User Feedback Form). This prompted users to write a comment on a Chatter group whenever an issue was encountered
- Feedback/discussion directly from users
The usage data helped inform questions to ask and discussions. However, this data only supplements, not replaces, the value of feedback and engaged champions who understand users, their needs and the needs of the business. As such, use the insight to empower, but not drive decision-making without understanding ‘why’.
Summary
The metrics within the Lightning Usage App are invaluable for understanding user adoption and interaction with Salesforce Lightning. Use these resources to monitor, support and quantify successes and issues. These metrics can ‘inform’ but should not replace user engagement and feedback. When data and feedback are combined, real insight is gained to help ensure user needs are prioritised and this will increase the likelihood of a successful Lightning rollout and optimisation programme.