Preface

This book will begin by quickly exploring the various aspects of process automation using Salesforce Flow. We will cover the nuts and bolts of flow and execution order, along with distinct flow types and troubleshooting techniques to manage your processes.

The book will also explore flow orchestration tools that let us compose and orchestrate complex business processes. In Part 3, we will take a complex sales scenario, use the knowledge gained from Parts 1 and 2, and automate a complex business process. You will get an opportunity to follow the end-to-end business process flow, automate the business process via flow orchestration, and learn how to demystify and simplify business process automation.

By the end of this book, you will be confident in automating your business processes smoothly and without any hassle.

Who this book is for

This book is for system admins, technical team members, and business analysts with a good understanding of Salesforce CRM software who want to learn ways to effectively automate their business processes using Salesforce Flows.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Process Flows – Understanding Business Requirements, explores and helps us understand the documented requirements and the process flows. Only after a good understanding of business requirements and process steps can we confidently move on to the next step to determine if a process step can be a potential candidate for automation.

Chapter 2, Identification of Functional Requirements for Automation, covers solution design aspects of functional requirements. We will explore in detail how to split requirements into tasks that can be automated. We will dive deep and discuss the rationale for every task we intend to automate.

Chapter 3, Business Process Features to Automate, discusses why it is important to allocate enough time and prioritize requirements automation. Prioritizing does not mean bringing requirements to the top as they come in from business users, but rather distributing around different releases on the road map to add optimum value to the overall business. You will be able to learn methods to identify important tasks and provide business value.

Chapter 4, Flow Building Blocks, Triggering, and Entry Conditions, covers the main building blocks of Salesforce Flows used in Flow Builder - elements, connectors, and resources. Then we will discuss ways to trigger the flow and entry/exit conditions. You will be able to understand the concepts of Salesforce Flows and get equipped to start creating flow at your organization.

Chapter 5, Salesforce Order of Execution, explores the Order of Execution (OOE) of how your system runs various tasks in the backend. OOE was critical in general for technical teams only in the past, but now it is more important for every salesforce team member. Understanding the OOE with real-world examples will help you get comfortable, and this chapter will explore the concepts of execution so as not to cause any technical debt.

Chapter 6, Types of Salesforce Flows, explores five basic types of flows to automate our business processes. You will gain a deep understanding of scenarios for each of the flow types - screen flows, record trigger flow, schedule-trigger flow, platform event-triggered flow, and autolaunched flows.

Chapter 7, Flows Using Apex Sharing, discusses a very important feature and share records via Flows that are not available by any means other than Apex coding. Now with flow, we have this feature available where you, as an admin, shall be able to perform these actions without code.

Chapter 8, Optimizing and Troubleshooting Flows, explores and helps us learn how to use the Flow Builder debug window to optimize and troubleshoot flows. Anything developed either declaratively or using code will run into some kind of bug, and you need a tool to be able to understand the error message and what it means. We will discuss a few scenarios to effectively debug and make sense of the flow for the users.

Chapter 9, Flow Orchestration, explores and sees how we can streamline and enable complex business processes using flow orchestration. We will explore and learn flow building blocks, and how these blocks work, and then discuss steps to create a flow orchestration. We will explore ways to monitor and streamline our orchestration as well as key considerations to make your orchestration effective.

Chapter 10, Compose and Orchestrate Business Processes, in this last chapter, we will look at a practical scenario, a simplified real-world business requirement, business process flow, and finally a flow orchestration that meets our business needs. We will look at making our orchestration efficient, effective, simple, and usable.

Assessments contains all the answers to the questions from all the chapters.

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

Code in text: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: “ The HAVING clause is used to filter rows resulting from the GROUP BY clause.”

A block of code is set as follows:

SELECT <select list>
      FROM <object source>
      WHERE <search condition>
      GROUP BY <group by expression>
      HAVING <search condition>
      ORDER BY <order expression>

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For instance, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in bold. Here is an example: “Since we want this to be launched at the discretion of the Account Manager, in this scenario, we created a custom link called Customer Upgrade on the Account page under the Details section.”

Tips or important notes

Appear like this.

Get in touch

Feedback from our readers is always welcome.

General feedback: If you have questions about any aspect of this book, email us at [e-mail] and mention the book title in the subject of your message.

Errata: Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you have found a mistake in this book, we would be grateful if you would report this to us. Please visit www.packtpub.com/support/errata and fill in the form.

Piracy: If you come across any illegal copies of our works in any form on the internet, we would be grateful if you would provide us with the location address or website name. Please contact us at [e-mail] with a link to the material.

If you are interested in becoming an author: If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, please visit authors.packtpub.com

Share Your Thoughts

Once you’ve read Business Process Automation with Salesforce Flow, we’d love to hear your thoughts! Please click here to go straight to the Amazon review page for this book and share your feedback.

Your review is important to us and the tech community and will help us make sure we’re delivering excellent quality content.

Download a free PDF copy of this book

Thanks for purchasing this book!

Do you like to read on the go but are unable to carry your print books everywhere? Is your eBook purchase not compatible with the device of your choice?

Don’t worry, now with every Packt book you get a DRM-free PDF version of that book at no cost.

Read anywhere, any place, on any device. Search, copy, and paste code from your favorite technical books directly into your application.

The perks don’t stop there, you can get exclusive access to discounts, newsletters, and great free content in your inbox daily

Follow these simple steps to get the benefits:

1. Scan the QR code or visit the link below

https://packt.link/free-ebook/9781835089255

2. Submit your proof of purchase
3. That’s it! We’ll send your free PDF and other benefits to your email directly