Adopt Visualforce with new Lightning Experience

None of us are anymore oblivious of the fact that Salesforce Lightning Experience is a modern, productive user experience designed to multiply the efficiency manifold. It has re-envisioned desktop experience and results in a more productive interface to support sales rep but it’s effect doesn’t etiolate here. It stretches to every aspect of Salesforce Classic and so to Visualforce.

Lightning Experience is a drastic change but it doesn’t imply that Visualforce pages stops working. The Salesforce Spring’16 release includes the beta support for Visualforce in Lightning experience that is production quality but has certain known limitations.

If you are not okay with the Visualforce pages ‘just working’ and you want it to work and appeal the way you want then you should consider the following aspects:

• If the Visualforce pages makes use of JavaScript then Visualforce doesn’t own the entire page in Lightning so it needs to follow some new rules.
• Secondly if it has build in components and it is in sync with the Salesforce classic styling then some re-work needs to be done to match the Lightning Experience.

Having discussed about the limitations here are a few places where you can use Visualforce effectively in Lightning Experience:

• Using App launcher to run a Visualforce Page- You can goto the header of App Launcher and by clicking on the button of more apps you can go to my custom apps. And on clicking my custom apps displays the tabs in that app, including your Visualforce pages. Unlike Salesforce Classic you need to add the Visualforce pages to the tab and the tab to my custom app prior to accessing them from the App Launcher.
• Adding Visualforce Page in Lightning App Builder- On creating a custom app page in Lightning App Builder, you can add a Visualforce page to the page by using the Visualforce component. You need to enable ‘Available for Salesforce mobile apps and Lightning Pages’ for a Visualforce page to make it available.
• Displaying a Visualforce Page within a Standard Page Layout - You can also extend your page layouts by embedding Visualforce pages on them. And it can be used to display completely custom content on a standard page.
• Displaying Visualforce Page using Custom Buttons and Links - JavaScript, URL buttons and links are not supported in Lightning experience but  Visualforce items are supported, you can create new actions in the form of button and links by defining them on an object. The process of defining Visualforce buttons and links is identical to Salesforce Classic.
• Displaying Visualforce Page by Overriding Standard buttons or links - You can override the actions available on an object with a Visualforce page. When the user clicks a button or link that has been overridden, your page displays instead of the standard page.

There are two faces of a coin and so does any change! Some of us are cribbing at the changes but I am sure you have a lot to look forward to and experience the better with Lightning Experience.

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