Is Your App Powered by Lightning?
There are moments, over the course of our careers in software, when the stars align and we are given a rare opportunity to do something truly inspiring and game-changing. Something that changes the course of the whole company. Something that inspires a far-reaching ecosystem of customers, system integrators, and app partners to put user experience at the heart of everything they do. Something that allows them to rethink their apps in ways they previously thought impossible. For many of us here at Salesforce, that moment came when we launched Lightning Experience in 2015.
We launched Lightning Experience together with 110+ Lightning Ready AppExchange Apps at Dreamforce 2015. Lightning Ready Apps run correctly within Lightning Experience and do not need to be styled using the Salesforce Lightning Design System. Since then, we have worked closely with many more AppExchange Partners, who tested their apps and implemented changes when required, enabling their customers to fully transition to Lightning Experience. The response has been staggering — today more than 88% of all installed AppExchange Apps are Lightning Ready apps.
For some of our AppExchange Partners, ensuring their apps worked in Lightning experience wasn’t enough. They decided to blaze a new trail — to take this amazing opportunity to embrace everything Lightning has to offer. They’ve completely designed their user experience for Lightning Experience primarily using Lightning Components and the Lightning Design System. They enabled System Administrators to create apps that are easily customizable using the Lightning App Builder. They provided branded Lightning Apps that are fully upgradeable and that customers can customize to their needs.
Yet there wasn’t a designation that allowed them to showcase the great work they’ve done in Lightning. We’re happy to announce that’s changed.
Our new Lightning designation for AppExchange Apps — Powered by Lightning — launches today with 25+ apps currently available on the AppExchange:
You can find Powered by Lightning apps showcased in our new collection on the AppExchange, making it incredibly easy for customers to find best-of-breed apps that make the most out of Lightning Experience.
7Summits steals the show as a “Powered by Lightning” app at Dreamforce 2018
For the second year in a row, we organised the Lightning Pitch Contest at Dreamforce, allowing AppExchange Partners to pitch and demo their apps in front of judges from our Lightning Product Leadership at Salesforce. Six partners made it to the final and 7Summits won with their Product Enablement app that supports both Lightning Experience and Lightning Bolt.
This is the second time 7Summits won the Lightning Pitch Contest, clinching victory in 2017 in the Lightning Component contest. To no surprise, they have a Powered by Lightning app, showcasing how much investment 7Summits put into leveraging Lightning as part of their AppExchange App.
“7Summits embraced Lightning a few years ago and hasn’t looked back since. While it was young in the Lightning lifecycle at the time, we could see that this is where the innovation was and we wanted to be aligned with Salesforce.
With the Product Enablement Lightning Bolt, 7Summits fully leveraged the Lightning platform, embedding extreme configurability into the app for admins and providing multiple channels for interaction of the platform. We built our components once and surfaced them in Lightning Communities, Lightning Experience, Lightning Flow, and the Salesforce app to satisfy multiple use cases and support multiple audiences without redundant development. The power of Lightning was a game-changer and allowed us to build something that simply wouldn’t have been possible on Visualforce.” — Phil Weinmeister, VP Product Management, 7Summits
How can I apply for the “Powered by Lightning” Designation for my app?
The Powered by Lightning requires you to submit a nomination, unlike the self-enabled Lightning Ready designation. We recommend that you read our Powered by Lightning requirements before you apply.
If your app’s custom user interface was built using Lightning Components, leveraging Lightning Design System throughout, you have quite a few Lightning Components available for System Administrators to customise your app and you have one or more branded Lightning apps as part of your managed package, your app is likely to be Powered by Lightning. So don’t hesitate — review the requirements and submit your nomination today!
