Find Your Way Around Lightning Experience

To hone your Lightning Experience chops, learn where to find key Salesforce features.

Required Editions

Available in: Lightning Experience

Available in: All Editions except for Database.com

Tip The way your Salesforce user interface appears depends on several factors, including the edition your company is using and whether your Salesforce admin has customized your environment or implemented Salesforce Foundations. This topic provides guidance on the default experience. If your interface looks different, ask your Salesforce admin for guidance.

Rather learn about Lightning Experience with a video? Check out Lightning Experience: Take it for a Spin.

The Basics

The top of each Lightning Experience page provides the navigation bar, with tabs and links for accessing major Salesforce features.

Lightning Experience navigation bar with items

Salesforce Foundations augments the default interface with an additional, vertical navigation bar along the left side of the user interface.

Lightning Experience with Salesforce Foundations user interface updates applied

Select a tab in the navigation bar to switch among objects and features (1).
Search to find a record (2).
Access user-specific customizations from your profile (3).
If you have administrator privileges, use the Setup menu or Quick Settings to customize Salesforce for your organization (4).
Access help resources and training (5).
View and access other apps within Salesforce from the App Launcher (6). Each app contains different features and tabs.
View more tabs that aren’t visible on the navigation bar or the vertical navigation bar in Salesforce Foundations (7).

Home Page

The Lightning Experience home page provides a variety of tools to help you start your day fast. For sales reps, the focus is on top priorities, including quarterly sales performance and insights on key accounts. There’s even an Assistant, your action list of things to do.

Salesforce Foundations provides a different home page experience with the unified Home app. Start working right away with suggestions that are recommended to you based on your business needs and processes. Select View All Cards to explore more suggestions (1). Keep up with recent activity and quickly access the most important things to you (2). Stay informed about business data that’s relevant to your company by personalizing what appears on the Home app. Click Down icon on the top-right corner of a card and select Change Home Card (3).

Home app user interface from Salesforce Foundations, with suggestions and cards

And Much More

We’ve covered the fundamentals for getting started with Lightning Experience. When you’re ready to go deeper on features specific to your role, take a look at the Lightning Experience Features module in Trailhead.

Sales Features: Complete your sales processes from an action-first workspace that helps you work deals faster and smarter. For a quick review, see Explore the New Sales Tools.
Service Features: Manage service processes more efficiently and boost service team productivity. Check out the benefits of Lightning Console and more in Explore the New Service Tools.
Analytics: Gain insights, track performance, and make data-driven decisions with interactive, easy-to-navigate reports and dashboards. See Explore Reports and Dashboards.