Last Updated on June 17, 2024 by Rakesh Gupta

Big Idea or Enduring Question:

• How to Launch a Salesforce Flow from a CRM Analytics Dashboard?

Objectives:

After reading this blog, you’ll be able to:

1. Launch screen flows from CRM Analytics dashboards
2. Pass values to flow variables from CRM Analytics dashboards
3. And much more

Business Use case

Janel Parrish is working as a Junior Developer at Gurukul on Cloud (GoC). Janel is passionate about continuous learning and spends his free time acquiring new skills to enhance his development toolkit. Recently, Janel has embarked on a journey into CRM Analytics and is keen to understand how to launch flows from an Analytics dashboard.

To be specific, Janel has created a Sales Dashboard that includes a component to display opportunity data based on specific calculations.

He wants to open a screen flow and pass the values of Industry, Won, Lost, Open, and Total opportunity values to the flow variables. The flow then performs calculations using AI and displays the resulting score, as shown in the following GIF.

This functionality will allow Janel to seamlessly integrate real-time analytics with dynamic flow processes, enhancing the decision-making capabilities within the Sales Dashboard.

Why Launch a Flow from CRM Analytics?

Launching a Salesforce Flow from a CRM Analytics dashboard allows users to interact dynamically with their data. It enables real-time decision-making and the execution of automated processes based on the latest analytics insights. For example, sales teams can initiate follow-up actions, pass data to a legacy system for further calculations, and pass values back to the dashboard.

Automation Champion Approach (I-do):

To solve Warren’s use case, we will use Screen-Flow and the CRM Analytics Dashboard. This approach involves several steps:

1. Create a Screen Flow
2. Configure Interaction in CRM Analytics Text Widgets

Step 1: Create a Screen Flow

1. Click Setup.
2. In the Quick Find box, type Flows.
3. Select Flows then click on the New Flow.
4. Select the Screen Flow option, and click on Create.
5. Create few variables
   

   Name	Type	Decimal Places	Available for input	Available for output
   varC_Lost	Currency	0	Yes	Yes
   varC_Open	Currency	0	Yes	Yes
   varC_Total	Currency	0	Yes	Yes
   varC_Won	Currency	0	Yes	Yes
   varT_Industry	Text	0	Yes	Yes

6. Now add your logic to make an external callout or custom calculation. Add a screen component to display or process data.
7. Save your flow with a name like Flow for CRM Analytics.
8. Once everything looks good, click the Activate button. 

Step 2: Configure Interaction in CRM Analytics Text Widgets to a Start Flow 

In this step, we will configure interactions within the CRM Analytics dashboard to initiate the Salesforce Flow. This involves adding a text widget with an actionable link that, when clicked, will trigger the flow we created earlier. This setup ensures that users can seamlessly launch the flow directly from the dashboard, passing relevant data to the flow variables for further processing. 

1. Navigate to your CRM Analytics Dashboard in Salesforce.
2. Click on the dashboard where you want to add the Text Widget component, click the Edit button.
3. Drag and drop the Text Widget onto the desired location within the dashboard layout.
4. On the Interactions tab on the Widget Properties panel, click on +Add Action.
   1. Add a Start a Flow action and select the flow,
   2. Then configure the flow to receive values from the selected data source row.
5. After adding the interaction, a user can click the text widget and preview the dynamic values before starting the flow.
6. Save the changes to your dashboard by clicking the Save button.

Formative Assessment:

I want to hear from you!

What is one thing you learned from this post? How do you envision applying this new knowledge in the real world? Feel free to share in the comments below.