Salesforce Classic to Lightning migration

Undertaking a critical software migration is a daunting task that often costs millions of dollars and takes months, if not years, to complete. With the amount of effort and time involved with a migration, Salesforce Classic users are asking themselves: is migrating to Salesforce Lightning worth it?

In this blog, we’ll explain why thousands of businesses are carrying out a Classic to Lightning migration, and we’ll describe best practices for your migration. In addition, we’ll also highlight how test automation can ensure your migration is complete on time, and under budget.

‍Why migrate from Salesforce Classic to Lightning?‍

• Salesforce Classic is a legacy development platform whose functionality is quite limited. Lightning is Salesforce’s new platform that allows non-technical users to create customized apps easily, without requiring programming knowledge.
• Lightning offers a much better user experience, with features like drag-and-drop functionality that can be utilized without any code.
• In terms of actionable insights and visibility, Lightning empowers users with Einstein (Wave) Analytics reporting, which Classic does not. Einstein is an industry-leading tool for sales and marketing forecasting.
• Lightning offers an intuitive, sleek, and powerful UI that enables a swift transition between desktop and mobile devices.
• In terms of enhancements, the Classic platform does not easily receive any new developments or features. Specifically, only Lightning users will have access to the three seasonal Salesforce releases, which bring hundreds of new features and enhancements each year. Users on Classic will have to pay additional fees for updates and new services.

Salesforce Classic to Lightning Migration Challenges‍

While there are many reasons to migrate from Classic to Lightning, the migration isn’t as easy as flipping a switch. For many organizations, migrating to Lightning can be a painstaking process that takes months. However, with a robust, test focussed migration strategy, you can ensure the transition to Lightning is a smooth and seamless process.

Best practices for Salesforce Classic to Lightning migration‍

If you’re wondering how to quickly and efficiently migrate from Classic to Lightning in Salesforce, below are some best practices.

Step 1: Lightning readiness check

You must thoroughly evaluate your Salesforce org to understand how your organization currently uses Salesforce Classic. This helps you understand the impact of a Lightning migration on your users’ critical workflows. Since some of the existing features in Classic will not be available in Lightning and need to be replaced with new ones, there’s a possibility of process deviations. Readiness checks pick up unforeseen bugs or org incompatibilities. Further, readiness checks:

• uncover potential code issues, including direct and indirect code dependencies.
• provide visibility into the most at risk components during a migration.
• discover features your users are currently using in the Classic version, but won’t be able to, in Lightning.
• figure out disruptions to your critical integrations and APIs.

Step 2: Perform the migration to sandbox‍

You must migrate your org to a sandbox, which is a test environment that Salesforce provides as a “safe space” for testing and training, or experimenting with different configurations, new apps, or significant changes to your setup.

The sandbox allows key stakeholders and super users to test out new functionality and provide critical feedback before an official launch. Using a sandbox greatly increases your opportunity to eliminate bugs before going live.

Step 3: Test your migration in sandbox‍

Testing Salesforce Lightning in the sandbox is arguably the most crucial step in the migration, as it ensures that apps, features, customizations, and integrations work as intended. Testing should also cover features that were not covered during Lightning Experience Readiness Check. As some of the features in Classic need to be replaced with the ones in Lightning, testing needs to be done to understand each process deviation. Exhaustive user acceptance testing and functional testing needs to be performed to understand the impact of each change, and decide the necessary workarounds.

Step 4: Roll out Lightning to end users

Once testing is done, you can roll out Lightning to individual departments.

Step 5: Perform post migration integrity checks‍

Allocate Lightning to specific groups of users so as to refine the UI based on their feedback. Continue to repeat the tests for different user groups, and identify common pain points.

Step 6: Testing post-migration ‍

One of the biggest advantages of a Classic to Lightning migration is the access to hundreds of new features in the form of seasonal releases. However, Salesforce seasonal releases must be thoroughly tested. Furthermore, with every new customization and integration that’s introduced to your Salesforce org, testing must be performed to ensure your system is functioning as intended.

Testing is integral to SFDC‍

It’s now clear that testing is an integral part of the Salesforce development lifecycle (SFDC), and we explain here why relying on manual Salesforce testing isn’t a viable option. To speed up the migration process and ensure the migration doesn’t go over-budget, you need Salesforce test automation.

Automating Salesforce testing is a challenge‍

When choosing an automated Salesforce testing platform, you need to understand that business users are the key stakeholders in Salesforce Lightning migration success. They’re the ones who typically execute UAT and functional testing, and they’re the ones usually responsible for seasonal update testing.

Because these users are usually non-technical, you must use a no-code test automation platform with a low learning curve.

Read our blog: Test Automation for Salesforce: How to evaluate a tool‍

And we believe Opkey is the industry’s most advanced no-code Salesforce test automation platform.

Here’s how:

‍Zero-code automation: Opkey comes with a Salesforce-specific record and playback engine that allows business users to intuitively create test cases on the fly. Opkey can be operated without any technical knowledge and can easily handle Salesforce’s dynamic objects and controls, since it communicates directly with Salesforce APIs.

Self-configuring test scripts: Opkey comes packed with built-in AI, and directly consumes meta-data to autonomously detect your existing configurations. This reduces initial test automation setup time by up to 70%. Said another way, Opkey automatically detects API endpoints for your salesforce org, ensuring 70% faster test creation.

Self-healing test scripts: Since Opkey is a meta-data driven platform, whenever there are changes to test scripts due to a change in an object property, it automatically identifies those changes and fixes them without human intervention. This greatly alleviates the burden of test maintenance.

End-to-end testing: Opkey offers support for dozens of applications in the Salesforce app exchange, including Copado, Gearset, and others, along with web, mobile, APIs, Desktop, Citrix, Mainframes, and other legacy applications. You can seamlessly use Opkey for end-to-end testing across Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, CPQ, and other modules. This ensures that when your Salesforce org updates, no integrations break.

‍ Seamless test management: Opkey natively integrates with test management tools like Jira, Jenkins, Bamboo, ALM, and more. This ensures your Salesforce releases are complete in a time-efficient manner.

Originally published at https://www.opkey.com.