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What are Salesforce Workflows?

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Ishaan Chaudhary
What are Salesforce Workflows?

Salesforce Workflow is a container or business logic engine that automates operations according to predefined rules. When the conditions are satisfied, the procedures are carried out. If certain conditions aren't satisfied, the data will still be stored, but nothing will happen.


Salesforce's Workflow Rules (or just "workflow") is an automation tool that provides efficient ways to replace manual tasks and enhance existing workflows inside an organisation. Rules in a workflow denote conditions that must be satisfied before a predetermined course of action is taken.


For instance, when a User's "Date" field on an Opportunity is updated, they may get an automatic email notice. By having well-oiled processes in place, you can cut out the human element "from the daily job equation," reduce waste, and free yourself from the burden of having to remember everything by heart.


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Salesforce Workflow Rule Use Cases

Workflows have limitless applications, but it is naturally simpler to explain what a process is in Salesforce by providing some examples. With Salesforce, you may automate the following four process activities (among others):


Task creation, field updating, email notification, and message transmission are all examples of outbound activity. Let's look at a few examples to understand how these four steps work in practise.


1. Task Creation

It saves a lot of effort if changes to an item trigger the creation of new assignments from the developer for certain users. This is a positive example of when processes might be useful. Let's imagine the consumer has paid for his massive order, which includes a wide variety of items. When an order's payment status changes to "Paid," the responsible professional is notified and given the duty of packing and sending the goods to the customer.


2. Updating Fields

Overwriting existing field values with fresh data is a typical usage of process rules. Although this is the most often used operation, it fails in the cross-object scenario.

Such a feature may be useful on the Order page, for instance. There might be a date-based trigger that changes the "Payment Status" to "Delayed" if a client's payment is late. This time-dependent action may be useful for keeping tabs on orders and taking appropriate measures.


3. Email Alerts

Email notifications (through email templates) to recipients or lists is a third method in which processes might be useful. One useful workflow rule would be to automate the process of notifying people when a contract is about to expire. For instance, a manager or other responsible party might be notified in advance if a contract with a worker, partner, customer, etc. is about to expire. In this approach, you won't have to worry about missing any deadlines and the subsequent repercussions.

 

Receiving email notifications about an employee's forthcoming "workaversary" is a fantastic time saver for team leaders and department heads. Do you believe that congratulating a coworker on reaching another year in his or her position is a great approach to demonstrate that you care?


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4. Outbound Messages

Notifications are used to send outgoing SOAP messages through the fourth workflow activity in IT. An application of this operation is having a system outside of Salesforce where data is held, such as for marketing. Let's assume that these systems share client data, and that when a user updates a field in Salesforce (for example, a customer's last name), a workflow rule may trigger an outbound message to this marketing system, indicating an update to the corresponding field in the client’s name.


Which Elements Make up a Workflow Rule?


Now that we have a clearer grasp of the contexts in which workflows may be applied, let's examine the components that make up a process before moving on to the actual configuration of the workflow:


  • The thing itself (the record on which the workflow will be performed, f.i. Opportunity, Product, Account, Order, etc),
  • Evaluation criteria (the first step of the rule that determines in which cases will the workflow evaluation process begin, such as only when the record is created or after there's been a saved change on it), rule criteria (the second step that is made up of conditions that should be met to trigger the action), actions (the specified things that will be done if the rule criteria coincide, such as a field will be changed or a task will be assigned), and (optionally) the recipient of the action. Evaluation criteria (the first step
  • There are both time-based workflows and instant action workflows, and the distinction between the two comes down to whether the workflow's triggered action should take place immediately or later at a predetermined point in the future. For each of these configurations, we have produced two unique cases to store the components.


A salesforce course online can give you better insight into this subject.

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Ishaan Chaudhary
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