Salesforce Summer ’21 Highlight: Flow Orchestrator
What is it?
Salesforce automation is really shifting through the gears. Since the launch of Lightning Flow — the replacement for the classic and obtuse Flow feature — it is rapidly positioning itself as the fundamental automation engine in Salesforce. A lot of effort has been put in to remove the obtuse configuration from the early days and its capability is extending to the point where it is really challenging to make Salesforce Administration a codeless environment. This summer sees a pilot for its latest feature — Flow Orchestrator, a business process automation tool.
What does it do?
Flow Orchestrator manages business processes that might span several business functions. It works by bringing together individual auto-launched and screen flows into a business process. It logically evaluates each step, assigns them to the relevant user, and presents the screen flow for that user contextually in the record.
How should I use it?
Flow Orchestrator’s immediate application would be to retire the ancient Approvals feature, however it can be applied to just about any multi-step process that might span several users. Imagine it handling something like this:
* Sales Team need a solution to be configured for a customer, they begin a “Solutions Flow” which sets the stage of the Opportunity to “Solution Design”, assigns a task to the Architecture Team and sends them an email.
* Architecture Team work through the requirements and build a solution, however it the costing needs approving. First of all, an auto-launched Flow matches the solution against a rate card to cost the solution, and then the next step assigns a task to the Finance Team for verification and sends them an email, setting the stage to “Costing Approval”.
* Finance Team pick up the Opportunity, verifies the proposal, and then sends it to the Solutions Team to schedule, setting the stage to “Scheduling”.
* The final steps sees the Solutions Team provisionally booking the work into the calendar, before closing the flow and notifying the Sales Team that everything is in place ready for the customer to sign off.
Flow Orchestrator provides structure and automates the basic work of the process — such as posting updates to the Activity Timeline — letting each team focus on adding value rather than being tied up in administration. The visibility that the tool offers allows a 360° picture of where you are in a business process, contextual to the customer’s record.
When can I have it and how much does it cost?
In Pilot for Summer ’21, you’ll have to speak to your account executive to use this right now. As a basic feature of Lightning Flow, there is no cost attached.
Learn about it
At the time of writing, there is no trail for Flow Orchestrator, however, take this as an opportunity to brush up on your Flow skills in advance. Flow Orchestrator will be added to the mix when available. There is a Trailblazer Community group for the Pilot here.
