Posted at 9:39 PM by Rakesh Gupta, on April 5, 2021
Salesforce is the bridge that connects end-users and developers, including citizen developers, which make up a large portion of Salesforce’s developers. This explosion of Trailblazers have bypassed the challenges of traditional application development and led to the creation of millions of Salesforce applications over the last fifteen years.
Naturally, there are limitations to application development because of the intricacies of complexity and talent. Because of this, the Salesforce realm has begun borrowing from DevOps practices pioneered by IT teams.
To get to the root of best practices, challenges, and accomplishments of teams dealing with these complexities, Copado recently released it’s second annual TheState of Salesforce DevOps Report, executed and analyzed by Beagle Research. Copado sought to find out how teams innovating on the Salesforce platform can benchmark themselves against other players in the industry.
The key finding: speed > quality
This was a pivotal year in digital transformations. The last 12 months were tumultuous, and this report can give key insights for opportunities to improve and meet new goals for 2021. One of the major findings of this report is that digital transformation accelerated and software delivery teams moved faster in 2020 but at the expense of quality.
The report borrows methods used by the State of DevOps Reports led by DevOps Research and Assessment over the last seven years to understand the unique state and challenges of Salesforce development teams.
Adopting key principles from the long-standing and widely regardedAccelerate State of DevOps Report, Copado and Beagle analyzed performance across Salesforce teams in terms of the dual goals of innovation velocity and release quality and security. More than 230 executives, managers, and members of Salesforce delivery teams were surveyed in Q4 2020. Here’s a good rundown of interesting findings:Read the rest of this entry!
Posted at 9:13 PM by Rakesh Gupta, on December 1, 2020
Big Idea or Enduring Question:
How do you set automation to auto-convert marketing qualified leads?
When there is a chance of further negotiations with a lead, it can be converted into an account,contact, optionally an opportunity. In short, once the lead status has reached a certain stage, it can be qualified as a potential. On conversion, all the lead details are transferred in creating an account, contact, and optionally an opportunity. The lead conversion process is a manual process, if you want to automate it then you have to use Apexcode. This article will help you to understand how to automate the lead conversion process using the Lightning Flow.
Objectives:
After reading this blog post, the reader will be able to:
Use After-save Record-Triggered Flow to auto-convert marketing qualified leads
Use Schedule-Triggered Flow to call an Apex method
Business Use Case
Pamela Kline is working as a System administrator in Universal Container. She has received a requirement from the management to auto-convert marketing qualified (i.e. leads with Rating = Hot) leads and create an account and contact record.
Automation Champion Approach (I-do):
While this can be solved using various automation tools like Apex or Process Builder and Apex, we will use After-save Record-Triggered Flowand call an Apex method. To call an Apex method, add the Call Action element to your flow and select an Apex class with a@InvocableMethodAnnotation. It means they allow us to extend theLightning Flow by writing Apex code that meets certain criteria and then invoking the Apex from our Flows. If the class contains one or more invocable variables, manually enter values or reference field values from a related record. @InvocableMethod Annotation supports bulk operations. Let’s begin the solution for the business use case.
In this article, we will use the call LeadConvertdatabase class from Apex code. Make sure to review it.
Before discussing it, let me show you a diagram of a Process Flow at a high level. Please spend a few minutes to go through the following Flow diagram and understand it.
Let’s begin building this automation process.
Guided Practice (We-do):
There are 2 steps to solve Pamela’s business requirement using Lightning Flow. We must:
Create an Apex class and test class
Lightning Flow Steps:
Define flow properties for record-triggered flow
Adding an action to Call an Apex Class
Step 1: Create an Apex class and Test class
Click Setup.
In the Quick Find box, type Apex Classes.
Clicks on the Newbutton.
Copy code from GitHub and paste it into your Apex Class.
Click Save.
Repeat the above steps and click the Test class. You can get the code from my GitHub repo.
Step 2.1: Lightning Flow – Define Flow Properties
Click Setup.
In the Quick Find box, type Flows.
Select Flows then click on the New Flows.
Select the Record-Triggered Flowoption and click on Next and configure the flow as follows:
How do you want to start building: Freeform
Trigger the Flow When: A record is created or Updated
Run Flow: After the record is saved
Object: Lead
Select All Conditions Are Met (AND).
Set Conditions
Row 1
Field: Lead | Rating
Operator: Equals
Value: Hot
Choose the Option to Only when a record is updated to meet the condition requirements.
Click Done.
Step 2.2: Lightning Flow – Call an Apex Class
The next step is to call the AutoConvertLeads class from flow so that when flow fires it auto-convert the leads.
Under Toolbox, select Element.
Drag-and-drop Action element onto the Flow designer.
In the Action box, type AutoConvertLeads.
Clicks on theAutoConvertLeads apex class.
Enter a name in the Label field; the API Name will auto-populate.
Set Input Values:
Row 1:
LeadIs: {!$Record.Id}
Click Done.
In the end, Steven’s Flowwill look like the following screenshot:Once everything looks good, perform the below steps:
Click Save.
Enter Flow Label theAPI Name will auto-populate.
Click Show Advanced.
Type: Record-Triggered Flow
API Version for Running the Flow: 50
Interview Label: Auto Convert Leads {!$Flow.CurrentDateTime}
Click Save.
Almost there! Once everything looks good, click the Activate button.
Proof of Concept
Now onwards, if a business user updates the Lead Rating to Hot, Lightning Flow will automatically convert such leads and create an account as well as a contact.
Currently, the lead Gaurav Pradhan is Open and the Rating is Warm as shown in the following screenshot:
Now we update the Rating to Hotand see the flow magic.
Flow auto converts the Lead and create an Account and Contact or it.
Note: – I will suggest you implement this first in your developer org, test it and then move it to production. The same approach will work for the case assignment rule. Download Apex and Test class from GitHub.
Process Builder Approach
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?
Let me know by Tweeting me at @automationchamp, or find me on LinkedIn.
