The Salesforce Automation Toolbox

00:06hi my name is Meredith Fay and I'm a Salesforce consultant in this quick hit video we'll cover the standard tools available to system administrators to automate business processes within Salesforce Salesforce has many options to streamline manual inefficient processes that may currently be managed offline or across multiple systems some common examples of processes that can be automated and include the need to send an email notification to a user when a lead is qualified create a new product installation record when an opportunity has been one or have multiple sales managers review a new customer account once you've identified a process that could be improved in your business where do you start the goal of this video is to help you understand which tool is right for the job once you've decided where to start there are many great resources on the web demonstrating Click by click how to use each tool

00:59we'll do an introduction of when to use workflow rules approval processes the process Builder visual workflow and Apex code all of which can be accessed from the setup menu we'll cover them in order from easiest to most complex when you're first getting used to these different tools I recommend always starting with the simplest option to see if it will accomplish your automation goal if that tool is not powerful or complex enough to get the job done then try the next simplest tool the easiest tool here is the workflow rule this is typically the area that Salesforce admins are most comfortable with workflow rules are used to automate simple business processes a workflow rule will evaluate a record when

01:39it's created or updated to see if it matches the criteria youve established if the criteria evaluate to true or a designated amount of time is elapsed an action is initiated there are four types of actions available to you when using a workflow rule these include email alerts field updates tasks and outbound notifications which are just a way to send data to another system outside of Salesforce generally simple one-step updates or notifications can easily be accomplished using a workflow rule an example I mentioned earlier sending an email notification to a user when a lead has been qualified could be easily accomplished using a workflow rule to create a new workflow rule simply search for workflow rule in the setup menu here's a quick snapshot of what a simple workflow rule looks like once

02:28it's been built our next option in the automation toolbox is the approval process approval processes are unique because they really exist for only one use case having multiple Salesforce users review and approve a record in a certain order you as the administrator establish the criteria of records that need to be approved records meeting that criteria can then be submitted for approval by users and then they'll be automatically routed to a series of pre-designated approvers each approver will be notified via email when it's their turn and prompted to approve the record before the next person in line is able to do so for example if approval from a sales manager and a sales VP was required when an opportunity was discounted by a certain amount that would be a classic use case for an approval process approval processes have many moving parts that need to be configured in advance by the Salesforce administrator

03:27but the interface is relatively userfriendly and easy to interpret to create a new approval process search for approval process in the setup menu here's a quick snapshot of what the approval process interface looks like our third tool is the process Builder this is a newer feature from Salesforce and it's sometimes referred to as workflow 2.0 the logic behind process Builder functions very similarly to workflow roles but the process Builder is more powerful and allows you to execute more than just the four actions available in workflow rules for example process Builder allows you to create new records and create chatter posts which workflow rules can't do process Builder is a very powerful tool to have at your disposal but the interface can be difficult to interpret and it has some quirks due to its relative youth as a feature unless you know right off the bat that you need to be able to create a new record or a chatter post I recommend always starting with a workflow rule first to see if it can accomplish what

04:27you're looking for if a workflow rule can't get the job done then try out process Builder creating a new product installation record whenever an opportunity is closed one would be a perfect use case for the process Builder to use the process Builder search for process builder in the setup menu here's a quick snapshot of what the process Builder interface looks like our next tool is visual workflow more commonly referred to as flow the names sound similar to workflow rules which we discussed earlier but they're different features and are not to be confused some features that distinguish flows from the other tools we've discussed so far are that flows can be triggered by users rather than just by a record matching a certain set of criteria you can use flows to design screens that guide users through a certain process and

05:26you can use flows to build more advanced complicated layers of criteria logic walking customer service employees through a guided series of screens during customer calls could be accomplished using a flow the flow interface is more difficult to get accustomed to than workflow rules approval processes or the process Builder but there are many great how-to tutorials available online to create a new flow simply search for flow in the setup menu here's a quick snapshot of what a simple flow looks like to recap so far workflow rules are the most basic tool but are highly effective in many situations approval processes are good for managing sequential layers of record approvals by various Salesforce users in a certain order process Builder is like a step up from workflow rules if you need to create records post to chatter or update a record

06:28that's not accessible to a workflow rule visual workflow or flow is the most complex and is best for advanced multi-layer logic or any necessary guided user screens our final tool is the Apex Trigger like our other features triggers are just another way to execute actions in a specific context what sets them apart though is that triggers are made of custom code written by a developer and they're very powerful even if you're a declared admin with no coding experience it's important to at least know when you have a situation that requires a custom trigger if you've exhausted all the other options we've already discussed and still need a more complex Advanced solution it's probably time to talk to a developer about your use case because triggers often require additional expense and are not easily updated or maintained by System admins they should be treated as a last resort whenever possible

07:24now that you have a better understanding of when to use which Tools in Salesforce it's time to start thinking about what processes you can automate to help make your business and users more efficient this concludes the quick hit video for process automation tools thanks for watching