Automation Tools in Salesforce

Automation Tools in Salesforce

Salesforce is a leading Customer Relation Management (CRM) software that is served from cloud. It provides many tools because of which it has achieved this position. Automation tools are one of the declarative tools in Salesforce that make it more powerful by automating the number of administrative tasks that sales representatives and their managers have to perform manually. Salesforce provides multiple automation tools to automate your organization’s repetitive business processes: Workflow, Process Builder, and Flow Builder, Approvals. Each tool comes with its own unique features. The best automation tool for your needs depends on the type of business process that you’re automating.

Workflow

Workflows is used to automate basic processes which can be summarized with a single if/then statement which means that if certain conditions are met, then the corresponding actions will be executed otherwise it will not be executed. These actions can be either Immediate Action that happens immediately or Time-Dependent Action that will execute at a specific time. In case of Time-Dependent Action, criteria is evaluated again at the specified time before performing action and if the criteria is found to be false, the Time-Dependent Action will not execute otherwise it will execute. The actions that can be performed through workflow are: 

• Field Update
• Email Alert
• Send outbound message
• Create Task

Process Builder

Process Builder is the latest Salesforce automation tool that helps you to automate almost all of your business processes in the background, you don’t have any interaction with the process you just see the results when they are finished. It includes all the functionality of workflows except sending outbound messages without Apex code. It can handle multiple if/then statements and can perform different-different actions based on conditional statements in a single process that would take multiple Workflows. It can be triggered when a record is created or updated, or by another process or when a platform event occurs. It can be used to create new records, new tasks, send email alerts, post messages to chatter, submit records for approval, update any related records and call Apex code. Process Builder cannot be used to:

• send outbound messages without Apex code 
• delete records.

Visual Workflow

Visual Workflow (Flow) is well suited for complex automation tasks that require user input and multiple levels of branching logic. There are two types of flow in Visual Workflow: ScreenFlow and Auto launched Flow. Screen Flow is used to generate wizards with screens to collect data from users and perform actions according to the user’s data through a series of steps in your Salesforce org or an external system. It is triggered by a user action like clicking a link or a button to start the flow. Auto launched Flow is used to launch flow in the background like other automation tools. It is called by Process to perform a complex business process. In contrast to a process builder, Flows can’t be initiated based on changes to a record. They can be initiated by calling them from Salesforce Process Builder, through a Visualforce page or by calling them through Apex code. Flows can also be used to delete records.

Approval

Approval Process in Salesforce automates the necessary steps required for a record to be approved and specifies approver to approve it at each step. It specifies what activities will happen when submitting a record for endorsement, when an approver or all approvers approve the record and furthermore, when an approver rejects a record. The activities allowed through the Approval Process are Field Update, Email Alert, Create Task and Outbound Message. Whenever a user requests approval, Initial Submission Actions occur in which the record is locked so that other users can’t change the record while approval is pending. If the request is rejected by approver, the Final Rejection Actions are executed, and approval status is set as Rejected. 

Which Automation Tool Do I Use?

Every Automation tool has its pros and cons. Some can perform one action while the others not. It depends on client requirements. This table specifies all the features and actions that are supported in each automation tool, go through it to identify which tool is suitable for your business problem.

Conclusion

Automation tools provides a consistent user experience for the customers and only performs the tasks when a complex set of criteria are met. And most importantly, it ensures that tasks to be performed are not forgotten. You can also integrate different Automation tools like Process Builder and Auto launched Flow to perform a complex process and can even call Apex code from the tools. In short, they have made the jobs of Salesforce Administrators easier.