Remember those times when you asked questions like:
- Can Salesforce automatically create Payment records when a Request is Awarded?
- Can we collect custom information about an Organization when an Applicant registers on the foundationConnect Portal, that will then update the Organization record?
- Can we automatically populate the Board Docket field (which is a lookup to another record) for a Request based on the submission date?
And the answer was:
- Yes, we CAN…BUT we’ll have to write a custom trigger (read: custom development/code that usually takes many hours to write)
Well, with the Spring ’15 Release from Salesforce, the “button-click admin” gods shined down upon us and gave us the Process Builder! When I talk about Process Builder with clients, I refer to it as “Workflow Rules on steroids”.
This functionality has opened SO MANY doors for us that will eliminate the need to write custom code.
Here are just a few of the things that you can do with Process Builder:
- Create a record
- Update any related record—not just the record itself or its parent
- Populate a lookup field
- Update Fields using Formulas and Date Functions
Here’s a sample of what Process Builder looks like for automating the creation of Grantee Report records:
We wrote ONE Process to evaluate two separate conditions, and has 3 actions built into it:
When a Request amount is Less Than 100K – Create only a Final Grantee Report record
When a Request amount is Greater Than 100k – Create both a Progress Report and a Final Report
And within those Grantee Report creation actions, we can specify things like the Due Date, the Reporting Period, who the Report Contact should be, etc…
At this point, you are probably saying, “That’s so cool! What do I do now?”
Here are my recommendations:
#1 – If you already have custom triggers (code) implemented to accomplish some of these tasks, you don’t need to replace them with Process Builder (if it ain’t broke, you don’t need to ‘fix’ it)
#2 – If you’ve had some of these things in mind, but didn’t want to move forward with custom code, now would be a great time to schedule a conversation with us to see if Process Builder would be a good fit
#3 – If you’re really hard-core and want to try your hand at Process Builder, I’ll list some resources below that you can check out. BUT, please make sure you test your skillz in a SANDBOX
Click Here to Read the Summer ’15 Release Notes for Process Builder
