Two years ago we introduced Salesforce Lightning, a component-based framework for application development and a reimagined user experience (UX). It was (and still is) one of Salesforce’s biggest initiatives. Lightning redefines what modern CRM can be. Intuitive, easy to use, and packed full of 700+ new features, such as workspaces, kanban boards and completely revamped reports and dashboards, all focused on increasing productivity. And the best thing about Lightning is our Trailblazers — developers, admins and business users — who are now more empowered than ever to create completely customized experiences tailored exactly for them.
Even more exciting than what's new is the velocity of Lightning adoption—new deployments of 1,000+ users (like T-Mobile, BMC Software and Hitachi Ventara) go live nearly every week. And thousands of other companies like Autodesk, Penske and Google have now moved from Salesforce Classic to Lightning. By deploying Lightning and reimagining their business processes, Lightning customers have increased their productivity and collaboration by as much as 40%.
The entire Lightning framework — the App Builder, Components, Community Builder, Component Ecosystem and the Lightning Design System — was built to seamlessly work together so Trailblazers can easily build deeply-customized experiences. One of my favorite statistics about Lightning is that more than 77% of Lightning pages are customized, and I consistently hear from customers that they want to do even more customization with Lightning. That’s why today, we’re announcing myLightning—which takes the power of Lightning to the next level so businesses can quickly and easily create customized, branded apps and experiences at scale.
Introducing myLightning
With myLightning, every application, every portal, every experience that a company builds can now reflect their brand.
- Theming and Design System (new): Companies can specify the brand image, colors, page background image and more to ensure that Lightning aligns with their brand. Admins can either choose one of Salesforce’s built-in themes or create nearly 300 custom themes. Because the custom themes can be built with just a few clicks, companies can easily deploy a new theme to get their organization rallied around an important initiative, like a new product launch. Both the default and custom themes meet accessibility requirements.
- App Builder with Dynamic Pages (new): Dynamic Pages deliver a different experience to each user depending on the values of that record, enabling companies to deliver customization at scale. With the new Dynamic Pages, you can now control when a component appears on a record page by adding filter conditions and logic, creating a customized experience without having to add anything to custom components. It’s all handled by the Lightning App Builder. For example, a sales leader at a medical device company who wants to prioritize high value deals can easily build a filter that shows a deal priority component on the opportunity page that's only visible for opportunities worth more than $1 million.
- Lightning Flow (new): At their core, most apps are really a series of steps — a sequential flow that walks users through an experience depending on their answers. In fact, we process 100 billion process flows every month, which is why I’m so excited that our existing flow automation tools (Visual Flow) are now powered by Lightning. With the new Lightning Flow, admins can create guided, visual processes with Lightning Components and easily add them to a record, app, portal and console. Lightning Flow is a powerful example of how the Lightning system works together to make our Trailblazers more productive and marks the beginning of what is going to be a big transformation of Salesforce towards process-centered applications. When we demo Lightning Flow, customers sit up and say, “That’s Salesforce?! I want it!” Take Farmers Insurance — they're using Lightning Flow to streamline the processing of new property loss claims. Farmers customers (and their agents) can report a loss simply by uploading images from any device. By streamlining this process, and optimizing it for mobile, Farmers reduced the time it takes to report a loss from approximately 12 minutes to 3 minutes.
- Lightning Bolt: Introduced last year, Bolts are out-of-the-box solutions that contain industry best practices, Lightning Components and business logic. Powered by our ecosystem of partners including Accenture, Appirio and PwC, customers can tap into customized Bolt solutions across multiple industries and jumpstart the creation of a portal or customer-facing website. Since launching Lightning Bolts, we’ve added dozens more, including Supplier 360 from PwC which provides a single source of truth for suppliers and buyers to manage their relationships, streamlining processes and centralizing all interactions—including quotes, contracts, invoices, self-service and more—in one spot. And you can check out all the Lightning Bolts on the new Salesforce AppExchange.
We’re just beginning to scratch the surface of what Lightning can do. Lightning gets better and better with each release, and that is all because of you. Thank you for all the feedback and input that you’ve given us and please keep it coming — tweet me @mike945778.
Come see us at Dreamforce to learn more about Lightning.
Take Your Productivity to the Next Level with Lightning
Pricing & Availability
- Theming will be generally available in early 2018 at no additional cost.
- Lightning Design System is generally available at no additional cost.
- App Builder with Dynamic Pages is generally available at no additional cost.
- Lightning Flow is generally available and currently included with any Platform, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud or Community Cloud license.
- The Lightning Bolt framework is generally available as part of any Community Cloud license. Bolt solutions are available on the AppExchange and from the respective partners.
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