Lightning Process Builder

We can bring workflow rules to a new level with the Lightning Process Builder, a point and click tool that was made to easily automate business processes using a modern and intuitive graphical designer.

Each Process Builder is made up of certain criteria based on a specific Salesforce object and is used to trigger groups of actions (just like workflow rules), both immediate and scheduled (just like workflows, you can update a field when a specific time condition is met). We’ll also learn how to troubleshoot a process in order to understand why errors crop up, as well as how to speed up debugging and deliver a slick automated experience for your organization.

In this chapter, we’ll learn about the following topics:

• Setting up a Lightning Process Builder
• Defining action groups
• Managing the Process Builder
• Final considerations for building with a Process Builder

Setting up a Lightning Process Builder

The Lightning Process Builder is a modern way to develop state machines within a graphical representation. This is because a picture is worth a thousand words.

This modern tool is basically an If This Then That (ITTT) tool and like workflow rules and other automation processes (such as approvals or entitlements), it holds a conditional statement (IF), along with the corresponding actions to perform (THEN).

Do you remember what workflow rules can do? They can do the following:

• Update one of the fields of a source object or of a parent record (with a master-child relationship)
• Create a task
• Send an email
• Send an outbound action What can a Process Builder do instead?
• Create a record (not only tasks)
• Update related records or the source record itself
• Launch a quick action
• Post to Chatter (A Salesforce collaborative tool. For more information about Chatter, please refer to Salesforce Help at https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=collab_overview.htm&type=5).
• Launch a flow
• Submit a record for approval
• Invoke another Process Builder
• Launch an automated flow
• Send an email
• Send a custom notification
• Call Apex code

Besides the differences in the number of available actions, the Process Builder also allows us to apply actions in a specific order. This is something that is lacking in workflows. In workflows, we don’t have a way to predict which action was performed first. Moreover, the Process Builder works with platform events, while workflow rules don’t.

For more details about platform events, please refer to Salesforce Help at https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.platform_events.meta/platform_events/platform_events_intro.htm.

The ability to aggregate conditions and actions on the same instance of the Process Builder, along with having a clear graphical representation of the state machine, provides administrators with a powerful tool they can use to automate their processes.

Note that Salesforce is no longer enhancing workflows. This doesn’t mean that workflows will be discontinued – they just won’t receive any new features in the future since the Process Builder will become the next preferred automation tool (source: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/content/learn/modules/workflow_migration/workflow_migration_intro).

Also, it’s not good to mix workflow rules and Process Builders: evaluate a migration to Process Builder from older workflow rules, as pictured in the Trailhead module referenced in the previous information box. That way, you’ll have a more consistent automated process implementation and a better way to predict the automation behavior of any record.

The ability to have different versions of a given Process Builder also gives you the power to try new versions of an automation process, along with the chance to roll back if things go wrong.

While dealing with Process Builders, you’ll find the same concepts as the ones that are found in workflow rules, but with some enhancements and cool features.

Now that we know what a Process Builder is, let’s look at how we can build one.