I'm Gillian Bruce, principal admin evangelist
at Salesforce and you are watching How I Solved It
where we dive into a business challenge
and show how one awesome admin chose to solve it.
Today I am joined by awesome admin, Chance Martin.
Thanks Gillian. It's great to be here.
So as admins, we're always looking for ways
to drive efficiency and as "chance"
would have it, I'm sorry I couldn't help myself.
You recently encountered a situation where you saw
an opportunity to improve efficiency
by automating a business process.
Can you tell us a little bit about the problem
with your stakeholders to find a solution?
Sure, let me tell you about how I helped fix
an account communication issue using automation.
You see, we had a process built around client go live.
Once acquired a large team would need to engage
with the account to ensure it was ready
to go live as quickly as possible.
The teams would use Slack as the central
communication platform, but a lot of the information
used in the Slack channel came from Salesforce.
So a single person would use data from Salesforce
to create the channel, invite the team members,
and post relevant data to the channel.
I was challenged with automating this process.
Well, it definitely sounds
like a job for an awesome admin.
I automated the creation of Slack channels
for new accounts giving them standard naming conventions.
The automation added the right people
connected to the account, brought the approval processes
into Slack to keep data up to date in Salesforce,
and auto-archived the channel once the account went live.
Okay, so you use automation to improve the efficiency
of the go live process and facilitate better communication
thereby making it easier for team members
to collaborate and go live faster.
That all sounds amazing, Chance.
Any "chance" we can take a peek at what you built?
Yes, Gillian, let me show you how I solved it.
(upbeat music)
(bells chime)
The first thing I did was think about when
the account team needed to be connected in Slack.
I noticed that most of the time teams were swarming
around the account right around the time they're acquired.
You can see right here on the account page
that we document the stage in this field.
So I decided that the Slack channel should be created
when this status changes from negotiating to acquired.
Okay, I love how you explained that you thought
about the business process strategically
before building anything.
Now that you've figured out at which point in the process
to create the Slack channel, how did you set that up?
Well, I knew that I could use Flow
to automate the creation of the channel.
And since I wanted a series of actions to take place,
I set up a scheduled flow.
That means that I first needed to set up some automation
in Flow to capture the date and time acquired,
since that will be the starting point of the scheduled flow
Hold up Chance, you said flow.
Here you can see my overall flow for the process.
There are a few elements, so I'll walk you through them.
First, I set up the flow I just mentioned
that populates the acquired date
and time in the account record.
Then here are my scheduled flows
that are triggered by that date and time.
I've set it up so that the scheduled flows
happen one minute after the date and time acquired
so that I know exactly when these actions
are supposed to take place.
Aha, okay, so that probably makes it easier to test
because you know that if it hasn't happened
at that minute mark, something is off.
Exactly, every good admin likes to add
extra layers of control in the process.
Spoken like a true awesome admin.
Okay. What's next in the process?
Well, first I need to check and see
if this account has a Slack channel tied to it already,
which I do with this decision here.
If it doesn't exist, the flow proceeds,
but if it does, we'll get an error message.
If the channel doesn't already exist
this subflow will create the channel.
Wait, wait, wait, Chance.
Is this flow inception?
(dramatic music)
Can you explain why you used a subflow?
Using a subflow makes it easy for me
to plug this process into any other flow.
Since I might want to automate Slack channel creation
for another part of the business,
this will save me from having to build it again.
Okay, Chance, can you show us how you automated
creating a Slack channel using Flow?
First, I grabbed the account
using the record II I passed from the triggering flow.
Then I have two lists of users,
one with the email addresses of users that need
to be added to every channel,
and one with users related to that specific account.
We then use an action to identify which users
have already connected their Salesforce and Slack accounts,
as only those users will be able to be added to the channel.
Next, we create the channel.
In here we have a formula that standardizes
the format of the channel name to comply with
Slack's formatting specifications.
Once the channel is created, we update the account record
to stamp the Slack channel ID in a custom field
so that we can reference it in future automation.
Now that the channel's created and stamped on the account
we invite our users, post important information
from Salesforce to the channel, and pin that post
so that it's easy to find
throughout the life of the channel.
Chance, you've really harnessed the power
of Flow Slack actions in this flow.
You've created a channel with the right people
using user IDs, made sure everyone knows about it,
with the relevant information automatically.
But I want to see what this looks like for your end users.
So first let's kick off the process
by changing this account stage to acquired,
which means the account team now needs
to swarm around getting this customer to go live.
Then we can pop on over to Slack
to see my automation in action.
You can see that we now have a new channel
All the appropriate people are added to the channel
and we can see there is a pinned post
with the info the team needs
from Salesforce to work on this go live.
Well, that is Slack-tastic.
(rim shot and audience laughs)
I'm just imagining all the time you saved the team
from creating their own channels,
trying to track down information,
and make sure that the right people are in the conversation.
And you fixed all of those problems with that awesome flow.
Thanks, Gillian. But that's not all.
I wanted to make this channel even more useful,
letting the team complete tasks that would normally
require them to open Salesforce, right here in Slack.
That's why I used Flow Screens in Slack
to bring the approval process for bypassing
the credit check into the channel.
Chance, you're telling me that you superpowered
So there is an approval process whenever
someone selects to bypass the credit check
during this stage of the customer journey,
which gets triggered by this checkbox.
In order to bring this approval process into Slack,
I set up a flow using Flow Screens in Slack.
First it checks to make sure the channel exists
Then we have another subflow for the approval process.
Again, a great way to save yourself time so you can use this
automation in another process without having to rebuild it.
All right, Chance, let it subflow.
So in this subflow, it grabs the account,
displays a screen with radio buttons for approval
or rejection and then it will update the account
in Salesforce and provide a confirmation screen in Slack.
You know, I want to see that flow in action, Chance.
I'll start with checking the bypass checkbox on the account,
and then we can go over to Slack and see
that the approval request is right here
in the channel we just created.
I can approve right here in Slack,
get confirmation, and then we can go back into Salesforce
and show that the request has been approved on the account.
I love how you brought the process from Salesforce
right into Slack, making it easy for the account team
to work quickly and efficiently.
Is that all Chance, or by "chance"
do you have more to show me?
Gillian, I have one more thing to show you.
When the account goes live, after all the work
the team has done to prepare, they no longer need
to use the Slack channel, so I built an automation inflow
to archive the channel automatically when
the account stage changes from acquired to live.
My ears are definitely perked up.
I think we could all use some
auto-archiving of Slack channels.
Please show me how you built that.
In my primary flow, I have a scheduled path
that triggers when the stage is changed
from acquired to live, at which point the date
and time are captured the same way it is for acquired.
We'll check to make sure the channel
already exists and is not archived.
We archive it and update the account record
to show that the channel has been archived.
So if I change this account stage to live,
I can then go over into Slack
and see that the channel has been archived
and that is in fact it, Gillian
Thank you, Chance, for walking us through your demo
and showing us how you solved it.
You're welcome.
(bells chime)
Chance, I'm sure everyone watching would agree
that the automations in your demo were pretty slick.
Even Slack-tastic.
(rim shot and audience laughs)
Can you talk to us a little bit more
about why process automation as an admin skill
is so important when it comes to delivering success?
Process automation allows us to eliminate the manual effort
behind complex or repetitive business processes.
It reduces friction and time waste,
empowering users to spend their time doing the things
technology can't do for us.
It also improves data integrity and consistency
in business processes by limiting room for human error
and discrepancies in process handling between team members.
As admins we also aim to create human-centered
user experiences in Salesforce,
what we refer to as a designer's mindset.
What are some ways in which admins can ensure users
are at the center of the solutions they build?
They can involve users throughout the project lifecycle
from understanding the business needs
to post-release support, ensuring solutions do not result
in unnecessary additional friction for end users,
and staying up to date on the latest and greatest
declarative features of the Salesforce platform,
and keeping a human-centered mindset when imagining
how they can be used to create new
and update existing solutions.
Chance before we wrap up, can you please share
with everyone your top three communication tips for admins?
One, build trust with stakeholders
through open and honest communication.
Two, established clear, effective communication channels.
And three, take the time to dig into the why
rather than settling for the what.
Thank you again, Chance for being our guest
If you'd like to learn more about what you saw
in today's episode, please visit admin.salesforce.com.
With that, I'm Gillian Bruce,
and I'll catch you next time in the cloud.
