go with the flow: automating business processes with clicks
DESCRIPTION
Description: What is Visual Workflow, and how do I put it to work for me? Join Visual Workflow’s product manager Bill Takacs in this session dedicated to showing admins the power of Flow. Understand Flow basics, best practices and how to put it to work improving common business processes. Flow is a powerful tool that can automate any repetitive task or process. With Flow you can collect, update, edit, and create Salesforce information, and then make those flows available to the right users or systems. Flows can execute logic, interact with the Salesforce database, call Apex classes, and guide users through screens for collecting and updating data. The best part is that you can do all of this without using any code! Key Takeaways: ::Get an overview of Visual Workflow from an admin point of view ::Understand best practices for building and using Flows ::See how Flow can solve common business processes ::Build a simple process in Flow Intended Audience: This session is for Salesforce System Administrators, as well as Devlopers who want to learn more about Visual Workflow. No coding required!TRANSCRIPT
Go with the Flow: Automating Business Processes with ClicksJuly 10th 2014
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Agenda
What is Salesforce Visual Workflow
Why Salesforce Visual Workflow
How to use Visual Workflow
Demo
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Why Salesforce?
IdeaBuild App
Idea
buy & setup
hardware
install complex software
define user access
build & test security
make it mobile &
social
setup reporting & analytics
build app
Traditional Platforms
6-12 Months?
App
App
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Develop, package and instantly deploy apps
Access rich APIs and frameworks
Code in your favorite language
Add fields, design layouts, and manage users
Point-and-click workflow & business logic
Drag-and-drop reports and dashboards
Programmatic Declarative
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What is Visual Workflow
Declarative toolset to build and execute processes related to Salesforce domains: Marketing, sales, service and support
Extensible via APEX and Visualforce
Currently working on the ability to handle process orchestration and long running processes – BPM “Light”
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Why automate your business processes?
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Why use it?
Help maximize your developer resources.
Replace utility APEX and more efficient use of platform:
Easy Automation – repetitive tasks, actions, ect – all declarative
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What Problems are we solving = Automating Work
Reduce repetitive, labor intensive, and computer related effort
Reduce errors and inconsistences in data and process
Productivity – provides increase in productivity through automation
Connect Salesforce to other systems or processes
Reduce the cost of maintaining expensive scripts
Transparency over process and data = visibility, insight, optimization
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Business Value
Lower cost
Cost Avoidance
Revenue / Margin Contribution
Customer Experience
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Understanding Flows
Flows are visual representations of a series of events– They can contain multiple decisions (if / then), branching, and looping logic
– You can do more than creating tasks, field updates, and send emails – you can also create, update, and delete multiple records – and embed a flow within a flow
When creating a Flow, there are a number of things to consider when you’re getting started– What objects do I want to access?
– What are the fields I want to access?
– If creating a new record, what record types do I want to use, who should the owner be, and what are the required fields for creating a new record?
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Visual Workflow – Use Cases
Call scripting
Diagnostics & troubleshooting guides
Guided data entry processes
Product configuration
Sales quotations
Guided selling with sales methodologies
Employee on-boarding
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Flows Components
Cloud Flow Designer
Flow Management
Flow Runtime
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The Cloud Flow Designer
Drag elements from here to here to create your flow
Zoom in and out
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The Cloud Flow Designer
The Step element allows you to sketch out a draft of a flow – I’ll be honest, I never use this, mostly because you can’t activate a flow if it has any steps in it
The screen is where you design what the user sees – text, questions, checkboxes, etc
Decision element is a logic branching point, where you can create an if/then statement, like with Workflow Rules – only, it’s much more robust, allowing you to draw multiple outcomes, and you can have multiple decisions in one flow
The first tab is your palette
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The Cloud Flow Designer
Assignment element allows you to take a variable and assign a value to it – a good example is a date where you want to add 30 days – you can do that with the Assignment element
Loop is brand new for Summer ‘14 – it allows you to take a set of criteria and evaluate a number of records that meet that criteria, and then take action on all those records – for example, if you have VIP Accounts where the next action date is 30 days old, you could loop through all those accounts and create tasks for each one
The first tab is your palette
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The Cloud Flow Designer
These are the elements where you can Create, Update, or Delete a Record – you can also lookup a related record, based on criteria you collect from the user on a Screen, or data you pass into the flow from the button you create
These “Fast” elements are new for Summer ‘14 – they are the same as the regular “Create” functions, but allow you to make a quick record using what’s called an sObject variable (I’ll cover that shortly)
The first tab is your palette
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The Cloud Flow Designer
One of the most powerful aspects of Flows is that you can embed Flows within Flows – this means if you have a standard Flow you want to reuse, like one that updates stale VIP Accounts, you can activate that from another Flow
The “Other Actions” listed here are also new for Summer ‘14. They are your publisher actions that you might know from Salesforce1 – they allow you to quickly create Call Log records, cases, events, etc.
The first tab is your palette
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The Cloud Flow Designer
Variables are your new best friend. These allow you to set a value or a record ID and then reference/reuse it multiple times in the flow. For example, you might lookup an Account at the start of the flow – you can set that Account ID to a variable, and reference it again throughout your flow to do things like make an update to the Account, or an Opportunity or Case related to that Account.
sObject Variables are new for Summer ‘14. These are super charged variables – think of them as variables on steroids. Once you have the ID for a record, these variables allow you access update or reference to every field for that record.
sObject Collections allow you to group together multiple sObject Variables. You can then use the Loop function to evaluate multiple records.
The second tab is your resources
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The Cloud Flow Designer
A Constant is a fixed value you can use throughout your Flow. This is another one I rarely use.
Formula is one I use often. This allows you to perform a calculation, such as the difference in cost between two currency fields, and return that as a number. And new in Summer ‘14, we now support a number of new formula types, including Text, Boolean, Date, and Date/Time.
The second tab is your resources
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The Cloud Flow Designer
Choice allows you to create choices to display to your users on a picklist / radio buttons / checkboxes
Text Template allows you to create a text string using merge fields, like what you’d have in an email template.
The second tab is your resources
Dynamic Choice allows you to pull in a list of choices from an object, based on the criteria you define
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The Cloud Flow Designer
All the variables, choices, screens, events – everything you create will be stored here for you to view, edit, delete
The third tab is your explorer
Best Practice Alert! Come up with a naming convention to help you keep things organized!
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The Cloud Flow Designer
Once you drag the Screen element out onto the Cloud Flow Designer main panel
The second tab allows you to see all the Screen Elements
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The Cloud Flow Designer
Screen Elements
Text fields, both standard and Long Text
Number field, you can choose decimal points
You can set any field as required and you can also set validation rules
Currency, Date, Password, Checkbox options
A number of options for picklists, including the ability to multi-select
Create text to display to the user, including merge field capabilities
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Lead Processing Flow
Looks up lead, assigns lead to correct rep (based on geographic territory, creates task to follow up and emails rep they have a new lead.
Variables We’ll Need– Variable to bring lead into flow
– Variable to hold lead data
– Variable to set lead to the new lead owner (correct rep)
– Variable to hold rep information for task and email creation
Elements We’ll use in the Flow– Screens for user input and debug
– Fast Lookups to get info for lead and rep
– Fast Update to update lead owner
– Text template for email
– Decision logic to set lead to the correct owner
– Actions to create a task and send and email
– Formula to compute task due date
– Assignments to assign inputs for correct lookups ect.
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Flow Management
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Flow Management
Show Flows
Show Flow detail
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Flow Runtime
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Let’s Build a Simple Flow
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Flow Best Practices
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Flow Best Practices
Design before you build
Think through your data and variables– Build a convention for you variables
Use IDs to bring data into the Flow
Use Screens to debug or emails for headless
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Q&ABill Takacs
Product Manager, Visual Workflow
sfdcbill
If we don’t get to your question you can post them at:
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