As a user of Salesforce for seven years, I’ve grown accustomed to Salesforce Classic, but have embraced Lightning Experience as much as possible, working to be an advocate for the new user experience and overall platform. While there are so many positives and exponential potential with the platform, as an end user and Administrator, I’ve run into many frustrations while using Lightning Experience.
The majority of these frustrations have to do with the overall user experience which can make Lightning Experience unproductive. Here are my ten most frustrating user experience issues in Lightning Experience.
1. Lack of Text Wrapping – FIXED!
UPDATE: The Winter ’18 release brought the ability to do text wraps on search results, related lists, and list views. While I’m calling this one fixed, it would be nice if the columns were wrapped by default.
One reason that Salesforce Classic is so productive is that related lists allowed for text wrapping of fields. With up to 10 fields per related list, field truncation would have been easy, but Salesforce Classic wrapped text based on the size of the browser window so that the full text, of say, the name field, is visible. This, of course, makes selecting a record very straight forward.
But look at how Lightning Experience handles the very same related list.
There is no text wrapping at all. As more fields are added to the related list, the amount of text shown in the record name field column decreases. As you can see from the hover card, there is no additional insight into the project name because it’s not wrapped. Clicking View All doesn’t always solve this problem either. In my experience, I resort to either creating a list view or report or clicking to open each record to find the one that I want.
Vote for text wrapping in related lists on the IdeaExchange: Wrap Text on Related Lists in Lightning Experience.
2. Time to Propagate Configuration Changes
As all Salesforce Admins who use Salesforce Classic know, a configuration change can be made on the fly, and the changes are applied in real time. This isn’t always so in Lightning Experience. In most cases, I’ve had to refresh a page multiple times to see the config updates.
With Spring ’17, I’ve noticed that edits to Lightning Record Pages can take several minutes before seeing the changes reflected on the actual record. For example, I updated the Projects related list hover details before taking the screenshot above, but it took nearly 10 minutes and many refreshes of the Account record to see the changes reflected. Here’s what the Project related list’s hover card looks like now.
3. Save Report Instead of Run Report – FIXED!
UPDATE: The Winter ’18 release brought an all-new Lightning Report Builder in beta and it brings back the Run report option so you no longer need to save the report before running it!
Salesforce Admins live in reports. The majority of the time, the reports we generate are never saved; they are a one-time use for a specific purpose at that very moment, never to be used again. In my use of reports, I use them to perform audits or get a total record count for an object, et cetera.
Lightning Experience doesn’t let users create these throwaway reports without saving them first. So now, as an Admin [or even end user], I need to remember to go back and delete the report. A simple workaround is to create a “Trash” folder which the report could be saved to, but this seems like an extra and unnecessary step.
Vote on this idea to bring back the Run button! Lightning Experience: Run Report Without Saving.
4. Background Record Page Loading Time
I use tabs like crazy in my Salesforce orgs. At any given moment, Chrome has at least 5 Salesforce windows open for the org I’m working in. Salesforce Classic allows me to open links in a new tab, and when I navigate to that tab, the record page has already loaded. Super!
But in Lightning Experience, while it’s getting better, records don’t open in the background that quickly, if at all! Usually, it takes several seconds for the record to load once I’ve clicked on the tab resulting in precious time wasted.
If the overall speed of Lightning Experience is frustrating, vote for this idea on the IdeaExchange: Lightning Experience LEX – lightning speed please!
5. Open in New Tab Within Setup
When working in Salesforce Setup, not all of the Setup menus have been updated to Lightning Experience. The Salesforce Classic UI doesn’t operate the same in Lightning Experience as it does in Classic. Here’s an example.
Let’s say that I am using Lightning Experience and I want to update a couple of profiles. In Salesforce Classic, I would navigate to Profiles, then open each of the profiles I want to edit in a new Chrome tab. But, in Lightning Experience, if I try to do the same thing, the tab opens but displays nothing.
So I either need to duplicate the Profiles tab for each profile to be edited and click into the profiles from the new tabs, or click into each profile in a single tab, make the updates, then navigate back to the profiles list.
6. Chart Oddities
It’s not always immediately noticeable, but some strange reporting chart oddities can be found in Lightning Experience which, once noticed, prove to be quite an annoyance. Here is an example provided by Jorrit Droogsma in his IdeaExchange post on the topic.
These charts are identical with the first being from Lightning Experience and the second from Salesforce Classic. Notice how the axis is scaled differently in Lightning Experience? It has an impact on how the chart is leveraged.
Here’s another example from my friend Matt Bertuzzie; it’s the same chart with the left side showing the chart in Lightning Experience and the right side showing the chart in Salesforce Classic.
He says, “I know a donut chart sums to 100%. How is this useful at all!” Agreed Matt, agreed.
7. White Space Galore – FIXED!
UPDATE: The Winter ’19 release introduced Display Density settings! Similar to Gmail, you can choose a more dense or less dense view of Salesforce! These settings can be controlled by the user, but a default density setting can be determined by the Admin for the entire org as a starting point! LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this enhancement!
I’m a fan of white space in design, but there are areas of Lightning Experience where there’s just too much of it and in strange places. For example, here’s a contact record in Salesforce Classic.
And now the same contact in Lightning Experience.
Notice those huge gaps before and after the email field? Salesforce appears to be maintaining the data structure of the page [Email appears to the right of the Account Name field when viewing the record] but, because of the three fields that make up the Contact’s name, there is a lot more white space with no easy solution to alter this.
Here’s an idea to vote up: Too much white space in Lightning UI.
8. Limited Color Contrast – FIXED!
UPDATE: In the last few releases, Salesforce has increased the color contrast, and with the Spring ’18 release, allowed for org branding which further enhances the contrast of the page.
One thing that I think Lightning Experience has is a good overall design. It’s clean and feels modern. But, I almost fee like there isn’t enough color contrast. After using Lightning for an extended period, my eyes find it refreshing to click into Classic to view records.
I’m not a UX designer, but I feel like the fields could be a bit more called out, and the contrast between field labels and field values could be better clarified. For me, the text can start to blur together after a full day of use.
If you want more contracts in the colors of the UI, here’s another idea to vote up: Lightning – Increase Contrast between Text and Background.
9. Sorry to Interrupt – MOSTLY FIXED!
UPDATE: Salesforce has reported that this error has been significantly reduced over the last few releases. I’ve noticed that this is the case, and they continue to work on making the system less error prone! Thank you, Salesforce!
We’re all use to systems producing some error messaging, and I understand that Salesforce wants to collect more accurate user feedback for errors which is why this screen is so important. But, it is intrusive in that it’s a full-screen overlay and, in some cases, the error has presented itself multiple times for a single error. I end up clicking the “x” or “OK” button multiple times for the same error as a result.
There’s got to be a less obtrusive way to ask for feedback.
10. Stay on the Same Page When Switching to Classic
Lightning Experience has closed the feature gap [in Sales Cloud at least] quite a bit. But every so often, users need to navigate back to Salesforce Classic. For example, in my usage of Lightning, there are records in my production org that require manual sharing. But, manual sharing isn’t a supported feature in Lightning Experience right now.
If I’m on a Salesforce record, and I realize that I need or want to switch back to Salesforce Classic, the current page I’m on in Lightning should be the page that loads when navigating back to Classic. The fact that switching between Lighting and Classic requires retracing navigational steps to access the record is a productivity killer.
Here’s an idea on the IdeaExchange for this very thing: Switch between Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic – stay on the same record.
Have you found other frustrating or odd user experience issues in Lightning Experience? Share them with me by posting a comment below!
Brent is a passionate Salesforce advocate with a desire to help Salesforce professionals become exceptional in their careers. Brent is a member of the Salesforce MVP Hall of Fame and works as a Director of Delivery and Senior Engagement Manager at ShellBlack.com. View all posts by Brent Downey