Salesforce Classic vs. Lightning – Is Anything Still Missing?
Manual sharing is one highly requested feature that’s finally made its way into Lightning, due for general release in Spring ‘21. With the “Sharing” button available, users will now be able to share a record to a user, or group of users, just like back in the day with Salesforce Classic.
This is, perhaps, the final piece of key functionality to transition to Lightning. While missing from Salesforce Lightning, users were switching back to Salesforce Classic to do what they needed. We saw other examples of this – the recycle bin, for one – causing temporary functionality gaps and admin bugbears.
On the other hand, some features were left behind in Classic. These have now been replaced by even better iterations of their predecessors – for example, Account contact roles, are now ‘contacts to multiple accounts’, which I’m sure you will agree, is far superior.
This led me to ask: is anything still missing from Salesforce Lightning? Is Salesforce Lightning on parity with Classic?
Here’s what I found out.
Salesforce Classic vs. Lightning – Background
In releasing the Salesforce Lightning Experience, 2016 was marked as a key milestone in the platform’s history – a complete redesign of the user interface that was touted to truly modernize Salesforce and to support Salesforce for the next 20 years.
Lightning is not an extension of Classic:
“not a reskinning, updates of font and colours…moving to Lightning is a change management experience, it’s not a ‘lift and shift’” Source: True to the Core Live
Alongside the enhanced interface, ‘Lightning’ also encompasses the Lightning Design System (HTML framework for building components) and the Salesforce Lightning App Builder (declarative app building and Lightning interface customization).
Compared to Salesforce Classic, its predecessor that had served Salesforce users for over a decade, Lightning supercharges admin/developer capabilities, is scalable, and…sexy.
Salesforce customers were tasked with migrating to Lightning by running the Lightning Readiness Assessment. The transition turned out easy for some, however, organizations with tons of custom code and Visualforce pages found themselves bogged down and unable to switch. Other reasons to resist were performance issues (ie. page loading times) and, of course, functionality gaps.
Which Salesforce Classic Features are Missing from Lightning?
If you are looking for an in-depth comparison, this is the resource you’re wishing for. What I found most interesting, was not where the gaps lie, but what we have gained with Salesforce Lightning! Path, Activity Timeline, Kanban, News, Row-level formulas, dashboard themes, and palettes …to name a few.
If you want to take the investigation a step further, this page links out to “What’s Different or Not Available in Lightning Experience” for a number of categories, updated with each release.
I asked the community for their key Lightning gaps:
- Similar opportunities (not planned)
- Opportunity split details in the opportunities list
- Follow reports
- Entitlements: although these are in Lightning, they are not like-for-like with Classic
- Management of Entitlements and Milestones (and everything related)
- Service Console: features such as interaction logs, custom keyboard shortcuts, and ‘forget open tabs’ are either missing or not like-for-like with Classic.
Performance in Lightning vs. Classic
Salesforce Lightning Performance has been on everyone’s radars from day one. It did not take long for complaints to begin bubbling up about page load times and the processing speed in parts of the application. Lightning is a rich interface – however, some prefer speed over aesthetics.
While not pointing to specific features, performance is one reason why people disagree that Lightning is at parity with Classic.
Lightning Page Load Times
“Page loading time for some setup pages like Profiles takes more time in Lightning than in Classic”, said one respondent.
They’re not alone. We know from the True to The Core Live session, that this has been a focus for the Platform product development teams over the past 4 years – and will continue to be (you only need to read the ‘Lightning speed please’ IdeaExchange topic to see how hot this is).
Read more: True to The Core Live: Inside Look into How Salesforce are Developing Salesforce
There’s some positive news. Over 4 years, median page load times improved by 60%; as this is a median figure, some orgs have seen even greater improvements than 60%!
While the teams work tirelessly to improve this, some of the responsibility has been handed to Salesforce customers. Admins now have the ‘Analyze’ button to identify how to improve page load speed, keeping within the bounds of best practice page composition.
Source: Analyze Your Lightning Page Performance
Report & Dashboard Performance
Everyone knows that reports and dashboards are one of the major selling points of Salesforce. Personally, I love the Lightning report builder – compare it to Salesforce Classic, and it’s day vs. night to me.
“I want to love Reports and Dashboards in LEX but they are too damn slow! The amount of times I’ve switched back to Salesforce Classic recently to run reports is shocking.”
Again, Salesforce took a step in the right direction the ‘Update Preview Automatically’ toggle. The open-ended question here is whether users consider this enough to embrace Lightning reports as equals to Classic reports?
Summary
Lightning is not an extension of Salesforce Classic. Although, at first glance, one may think it’s a reskinning of Salesforce, the complete redesign of the user interface is intended to support Salesforce for the next 20 years – and with it, the Lightning Design System and Salesforce Lightning App Builder.
As Salesforce release Lightning versions of Classic features, or supersede Classic predecessors with better functionality, we must bear in mind that the product teams have to content with prioritization and dependencies – plus always choosing longer-term benefits over shorter-term gains when faced with trade-offs.
Karen
What about merging duplicates? Not everyone can use Duplicate Management. As an admin, I find that I do have to switch to Classic more than I’d like. Another issue: if a field is changed such as a picklist value is removed or changed, the field is deleted, you cannot open a Lightning Report that had that field. Sure, that shouldn’t happen, but it does. Sooooo, you switch to Classic to fix the filters, then switch back to Lightning. I also find myself switching to Classic to create a report if I need to add a lot of fields. Lightning is far too slow. I can grab several fields in Classic and drag them over. Not in Lightning. Running reports is also very slow if you have a lot of records in a particular object. It helps some to switch to Classic. There are others, I know there are. But that’s enough for now!
Christine Marshall
Thanks for your comments Karen! I agree that duplicate management is more difficult in Lighting.
Cindy Reynolds
For Navigation, the top-down tab-key order is not supported in LEX. Last update from SF on tis IDEA was 3 years ago saying it was on the Roadmap. The idea has over 12,000 points – will it ever be introduced? https://trailblazer.salesforce.com/ideaView?id=0873A000000cMf9QAE
Ellen Taussig
What about mass approvals? Am I missing new functionality in Lightning?
Christine Marshall
Hi Ellen,
Do you mean the Mass Transfer Approval Processes option in Setup? If so, this is available in Lightning.
Christine
Kathy DiMarco
I’ve not yet found an equal replacement to the Account Owner Report in Classic. If you know of something, please share.
Christine Marshall
Hi Kathy,
The Account Owner Report is available in Lightning: https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=sf.customize_accountreport.htm&type=5
https://trailblazers.salesforce.com/answers?id=9063A000000ibvtQAA
Christine
Jess C
the ability to merge accounts is far superior in Classic than Lightning.
Christine Marshall
Hi Jess,
Duplicate management in Classic does feel more intuitive and less ‘clicks’!
Monica
How is the account contact roles different than relationships and affiliations?
Scott
I also find that I couldn’t auto refresh dashboards is this now available? Also I couldn’t access salesforce to salesforce. It’s just super slow as well isn’t it. I hate the fact that I can make page changes and it can take a while for it to show. I hate I ha e to watch a tab in report builder to get it to shoe an example. I find lightning quite disappointing in many places especially due to speed. Making a report is slower in my opinion. Dashboards are way nicer obviously but yep, I couldn’t find a way to auto refresh them without going into lightning but that’s probably a user error.
Classic email templates, I’m not sure about that either and how easy that was.
Christine Marshall
Hi Scott,
Auto refresh appears to have been replaced with just the option to subscribe: https://trailblazer.salesforce.com/ideaView?id=0873A000000lLiMQAU
Kate DiMeco
I feel like merging accounts and contacts should be corrected in lightning to be like classic.
Christine Marshall
Hi Kate,
Agree that merging in Lightning seems less intuitive and requires more clicks!
Mike
Unlocking quotes for CPQ still need to be done in Classic
Anna
Has anyone found account merge in lightning? It is the last thing I switch to Classic for!
Christine Marshall
Hi Anna,
You can use Duplicate Records Sets to merge Accounts (and other objects). It’s a standard object you can find in the App Launcher menu.
Best, Christine
J
I’ve been working as a Salesforce admin for about 10 years. Working in Lightning sucks. Navigating and just looking at classic is a million times better.
IP
When Documents evolved into Files, the Externally Available feature (checkbox on the Document) went missing. To add a Logo or a Signature image to an email template, and have it render in the recipient’s Outlook – still required switching to Classic and creating a Document. Has there been developed a solution to that? Or is one on the roadmap?
Becky Thomas
Ideas does not seem available for Lightning?
Christine Marshall
Hi Becky!
Ideas is not currently supported in Lightning and unfortunately there are no plans to change this: https://trailblazer.salesforce.com/ideaView?id=0873A000000E4e0QAC
Mary Butlin
Brilliant idea for an article, thanks Lucy.
Like the others – I don’t think there is a way in Lightning to merge two accounts (that you know need to be merged but may not match any auto-rules). Let me know if I’m missing a way to manually merge two accounts (which you know to select) in Lightning – I’m always switching back to Classic for this. I use this a lot for NPSP clients when we want to merge the accounts before merging or grouping contacts.
I echo the thoughts around reporting – particularly the ability you have in Classic to multi-select fields quickly, I haven’t found a way to do this in Lightning which makes report creation painfully slow (e.g. to pull in all the fields pre-fixed with a particular label).
Christine Marshall
Hi Mary!
You can use Duplicate Records Sets to merge Accounts (and other objects). It’s a standard object you can find in the App Launcher menu.
Best, Christine
Tim Shutteworth
I was trying to write a Macro to make it easier for some counsellors at a NFP. It just would take away some many clicks but, I can’t as you can’t assign a task to a queue in a Macro in Lightning. You can do it to an indivdual but, not a queue. Quiet annoying. If anyone wants to help get the issue rectified, please go here: https://trailblazer.salesforce.com/issues_view?id=a1p4V000001Yq9sQAC&title=internal-server-error-in-macro-builder-when-setting-assigned-to-on-task-to-queue
DomR
Only in Classic it’s possible to configure a single prefix on standard fields like CaseNumber on Case or OrderNumber on Order. It’s not possible in Lightning 🙁
PJ Maman
NEW NOTE BUTTON!
Christine Marshall
Hi! Are you saying that the add notes functionality is still missing?
PJ Maman
I miss the logical organization of the NAV (ADMINISTER>BUILD) etc.
Emma Keeling
Great article! I’m glad I’m not alone feeling that the lightning report builder is SO slow, I end up doing almost everything in Classic – except for when I’m training users on report building…why…because the Lightning UI is 100% better, but I need speed day to day!
Christine Marshall
Thanks for the great feedback!
Alastair Dinning
Knowledge Article Creation from a Case is standard functionality in Classic, but I can’t find the how you can take a Case in Lightning as the basis of an article. We may have to resort to Visual Flow to do this.
Peter
Tags are still missing AFAIK
Christine Marshall
I think they would probably advise you move to topics:
https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=sf.collab_topics_records_admin_LEX.htm&type=5
Don Lowry
Topics just don’t compare to tags. Wat CRM doesn’t offer tags or keywords these days along with the ability to run reports and create lists from a tag search?
Jeffrey Sovelove
The ability to sort by subtotal on reports and PIE CHARTS!
Cindy Oberg-Hauser
I really dislike the mashup of Classic and Lightning for email templates. The library settings make it very difficult to search for and find even new templates.
Kaleb Anderson
Push notifications or live list refresh is missing from Lightning Console. I’ve seen it’s in the roadmap somewhere, but the fact that the Classic Service Console allows for items to be updated or removed from a list and Lightning doesn’t means that many Service Cloud teams will stay in Classic until this idea is delivered: https://trailblazer.salesforce.com/ideaView?id=0873A000000lJYEQA2
Please vote for it and consider this “missing” in every sense from Lightning.
Steve Early
If I want to get anything done, I go back to Classic. In Classic there are so many ways to get from here to there quickly and make a change. To me, Lightning is 1 step forward and 3 steps back. It might be “pretty” and have “more features”, but the path to get stuff done is a rocky road. And page load times? Fughetaboutit!!
Goutham
Why solution tab is not reflecting in Lightening?
Todd Seward
What happened to case solutions in Lightning? I find the Lighting interface clunky and simply nonintuitive.
(To be honest, sometimes we use a Solution when closing a case, sometimes the details around why the case was closed are in the latest email in the history, and finally, some of our team members use the case comments.) I often use Solutions, as that makes the most sense to me. Where did they go?