I noticed this about a year ago: The assignment element is confusing for most people.
I decided to expand my content to include more detail on the assignment element.
Read until the end to find the link to the infographic on assignments that you can download and keep.
What do they do? ⛖
The assignment element performs mathematical operations and moves data between variables.
What they don’t do 🛑
They don’t evaluate criteria to produce true/false outcomes.
Assignments run from the right side to the left side.Variable1 Add 1 will add 1 to the Variable1 value.Variable1 Equals Variable2 moves Variable2 value to the Variable1.
Popular operators ➕
Equals
Add
Subtract
Add Item (Multiselect Picklist)
Popular Collection Operations 🟰
Equals Count
Remove Uncommon
Remove After First (Text Collections)
Add At Start (Text Collections)
Pro Tips ✖
Use two consecutive assignment elements when you need one assignment to execute after another.
Build formula resources for complex statements.
Functions cannot be used directly. Instead, create a formula resource including functions.
Example Use Cases ➗
Counters: Create a number variable with no decimals, and add 1 in each loop iteration.
Blank text variables with an empty right box.
Assign error messages to a variable in the display text component for variable visibility.
Add 1/24 to date-time variables to add an hour.
Use the Equals Count operator to get the count of records in a record variable.➡️
Now head over to https://SalesforceBreak.com to download your infographic. Click on the last menu item on the main page. ➡️
In this video, I went through all the new Winter 23 release features and answered questions. I did not get the time to dive into the testing feature that is going GA. Stay tuned for another video on flow testing.
When I went abroad as a teenager, I saw that Europeans were quickly impressed with my practical solutions. Putting together two things to create a workable solution was not a big deal for me.
I thought I was a much better-trained eye in this sense because we did not have many of the solutions that Europeans had readily available in Turkey at the time.
I think I worked that muscle when I was on Eric Smith’s blog looking at an invocable action he wrote for flow that returned the start of the day (midnight) for a particular date. I immediately asked what context the action ran because I built a flow for a Nonprofit before, and I had to jump through hoops to try and calculate the time in the correct timezone to be displayed on the screen.
If this action could give me the correct start of the day in the user time zone, I could calculate a time offset for the system time GMT and convert all system times to the user timezone.
Needless to say, the solution worked, and that is why I am here writing about it. Eric Smith was super kind to post a detailed blog post about this. Please read it here.
Join the Salesforce Flow Office Hours where you can ask your Salesforce Flow questions.
Terry Miller and I will take your questions, look at your flows, and give you pointers on how you can solve your flow issues.
Come prepared with concise, actionable questions; structured in a way that clearly identifies the help you’re seeking.
If you simply want to listen and learn, we invite you to come. You do not have to have a specific question to join. If you’re a flow expert, we’d love to hear from you as well. Salesforce Flow Office Hours is for everyone at any level of learning.
Salesforce Flow Office Hours will be recorded and shared publicly for training purposes. It will also be live-streamed on YouTube.
When Is Flow Office Hours?
Office Hours are on the 2nd Friday of every month, the first one on 2/11/2022: 2:00pm – 3:00pm Eastern 11:00am – noon Pacific
Disclaimer: Joining the meeting grants us permission to record and publicly share. If you cannot or do not wish to be recorded please watch the live stream or posted recording.
Salesforce Flow Office Hours is a public forum. You are responsible for the information you share. We recommended sharing from a Dev Org or Sandbox and you use de-identified data.
Responses to questions are merely opinions of the giver. They should not be construed as endorsed by Salesforce. The recipient has the option and responsibility to validate or reject a given response.
Here are the links I accumulated in my WordPress reader over the years.
The selection criteria are not very scientific and super simple. The site needs to be a Salesforce-related blog. I need to have come across the site somehow. And the platform needs to play well with the WordPress reader. Some platforms do not issue the content in the format that can be displayed in the WordPress Reader.
If you find a link has been added by accident and needs to be removed, or you have a link that you want to add please read the instructions at the end of the post.
Hello folks. There is not a better time than now to get started learning Salesforce Flow.
Here are three reasons why you should start learning flows now.
A countdown:
You can either watch the short ebbedded video or read my message below.
3) Debug all the things: You used workflows and process builders. Have you ever tried to debug one when it does not work? You are pretty much blindfolded. You make modifications and see if the new version will work. You cannot follow your automation step-by-step to see where it is breaking. You are at the mercy of error messages that may not be very descriptive of the issue you are having. With the Summer 21 release you can debug all your flows before activating them and continue debugging after you activate them. The record-triggered flow was the only flow type that did not have all the debug features the other flow types had. They are getting great debug features with Summer 21. You can see the path your flow took highlighted on your screen before the error occurred. You can inspect your debug log that gives you many details, such as variable values and field values in your update step. The improved debug functionality is a great reason to start doing all your automation with flows.
Before I move on to the second point, I have great news for you. I just released a Udemy video course on flows that takes a very systematic approach to teaching flows. You will have lifetime access to my course with a 30 days money-back guarantee. Check the link below and the coupon code to get a great discounted price on this course for a limited time. Stay around for reasons number 2 and 1. I have some great tips for you at the end of the video on getting started with your learning journey.
2) Flow all the things: Salesforce announced last year that they would stop all development of Workflow Rules and Process Builders. Salesforce accelerated the development of Flow features and recommended this tool as the single low-code automation tool for the future.
More importantly, Salesforce is going all in on low-code automation and using flow in many other areas of the Salesforce platform. Have you heard of the Flow Orchestrator, Mulesoft Composer, OmniStudio, and Einstein Bots? If you don’t believe me check your Salesforce Summer 21 release notes website. Where are Flows listed? Under Einstein Automate. So all automation under Salesforce will converge to the same suite of solutions if you ask me. I don’t work for Salesforce; I don’t need to show you a slide of forwarding looking statements. However, please remember to make your own informed decisions. This is my personal opinion.
1) Skill up: If you are an aspiring admin, administrator, consultant or developer on the platform, you need to get flow-building skills on your resume. Check the positions that are posted online. Most of them ask for varying grades of flow-building skills. If you are building your skills to become a developer, the logic-building skills that you will gain by building flows will be extremely helpful on your learning journey. If you are a developer already, you will need to use a healthy mix of low-code and code for an easily maintained, long-lasting, and high-performing solution in your org. Check the Architects website by Salesforce for more details. If you are a consultant and you don’t know flows, you are not using the whole spectrum of solutions on Salesforce to best advise your clients.
Now, a couple of tips on how you get started on flows: – Start with record-triggered flows. You have seen and done workflow rules and process builders; these are similar to them but much better. – Use save as a new flow to change between the flow types. This feature is your friend. You will have to make changes and adjustments to your flow to make it work, but this will save you precious time. – Use real-life use cases. Start with a real need. If you don’t have a real-life scenario, get on Salesforce answers, Ohana Slack, and various Salesforce social groups. People are asking for help to build flows based on their unique use cases. Help them and learn in the process.
I will continue creating various content about flows. Subscribe to the Salesforce Break Youtube channel for free content. Give this video a like. Buy my Udemy class for a systematic approach on learning flows.
I wish you the best of luck and success on your flow learning journey.
