Now, you will build the flow you will host on the community (digital experience) site.

Important note: We will set this flow up to run at the System context without sharing under the Advanced Flow settings.

This simple flow gets an opportunity using the record Id as input and displays critical field values on the screen. Note that a decision is built to handle no or invalid recordId input.

Here is what the Display Text component looks like in the Screen Element.

Once you complete your flow and activate it, create a public community (digital experience) site and add your flow to the main page. Several steps must be followed to set up guest user access properly. We will not go into these steps in this post. Comment below if you need a follow-up post with detailed steps, please.

Once you set up your community, you can pass the recordId as a URL parameter to your flow to see the Opportunity record field values on your screen. You see the long URL in the browser address bar below.

Now, set up a simple record-triggered flow to populate the URL (long URL) field on the Opportunity record. Here is how you do it.

Now set up another record-triggered flow to send an email with the short URL to the owner of the record.

Your email action looks like this in Summer 23 (Yay!).

Your email body text template will look like this.

Your email will look can be seen in the image below. You may think it is silly to shorten the URL by looking at this since we can hide it in an HTML email. That is correct, however, the actual value add is when you need to text (SMS) the link. Short URL looks much better.

After debugging and activating all your flows, you can create a new Opportunity like the one below. Hint: Cloning and modifying a few field values work well when testing.

Voila: Your long URL and short URL are populated, and the email was sent to the record owner’s email inbox.

Enjoy

Note: These posts were written as a result of a collaboration between Josh Dayment and Andy Engin Utkan. I want to thank Josh Dayment for his relentless efforts and countless trials to get this demo to work.

Related Links:

Create HTTP Callout – POST 1/3

Create HTTP Callout – POST 2/3

Create HTTP Callout – GET

In the flow builder, you must add an action element for the HTTP Callout.

Before you do that, let’s set up the Named Credential the Callout needs.

In setup, go to Named Credentials, select the second tab for the External Credentials, and click on New.

Set up your External Credential as follows.

Per Bit.ly API documentation, your header must pass the Access Token to the Bit.ly API. Generate your Access Token on Bit.ly, as seen below.

Your Access Token will be saved in Principals under Named Credentials. Set it up as follows.

Paste the Access Token form Bit.ly into the value field.

Now your Principle is ready to be used.

The Bit.ly API expects the Access Token to be passed in the header. This is the header section that you will need to set up.

Create your first custom header as follows.

One more custom header is needed. Set it up exactly like in the image below.

Now you are ready to complete your Named Credential setup.

Having set up all parameters the HTTP Callout needs, go to your flow to create the action. Insert an action element and click on “Create HTTP Callout”.

Give it a Name and choose the Named Credential you created. Click Next.

Set up the following parameters.

Get your example request and response JSON here: https://dev.bitly.com/docs/tutorials/shorten-customize-links/

Paste the JSON and click on Review. Hit Done.

Do the same thing for the response. This will create the Apex Defined Variables.

You should see two checkmarks after you click on Done above. Once you complete these steps, your HTTP Callout will be ready.

Now let’s set up the remaining flows and the community (digital experience) site.

Please continue to the third post by clicking here.

Related Links:

Create HTTP Callout – POST 1/3

Create HTTP Callout – POST 3/3

Create HTTP Callout – GET

HTTP Callout in Spring 23 got many people excited. The blog post and the video by Josh Dayment and I drew quite some attention. We heard one criticism for this functionality: the solution was incomplete without the POST method.

With Summer 23, the Salesforce Flow Product Team not only moves the GET method to GA, but also gives us the POST method in Beta.

The use case we picked for this demo is based on a real-life client requirement. The client wants to shorten the long URL links before they send them to customers via email or text. Text (SMS) requirement is very important because we cannot hide the long URL behind a short label there since SMS does not support rich text. I don’t have texting set up in my preview Org, therefore, I will demo this using email.

The solution consists of many parts. The list is as follows:

• Bit.ly is the service that supports an API with a POST method to shorten URLs. We will need an account with Bit.ly. The good thing is they allow us to use the service for free until we reach a certain number. (1)
• A record-triggered flow with an async path that uses the HTTP callout to Bit.ly to shorten the URL (2)
• A public digital experience (community) site that houses a screen flow to display the critical field values for the Opportunity (3)
• A screen flow that runs at system context without sharing to show the critical Opportunity field values on the community site. (4)
• A simple record-triggered flow to create the long URL on the record (this can also be a formula field) (5)
• A simple record-triggered flow that generates the email with the short link. (6)

And a few custom fields on the Opportunity object: URL (long) and Short URL text fields and a Short URL Requested checkbox field.

First, we go to Bit.ly to create a free account. They have API documentation available. However, I cannot say the documentation is very clear. Here is the relevant settings page we need to create the access token for the API.

*I wiped my values from the screenshot; you will need to copy yours by going to this screen.

We will come back to this later.

Let’s walk you through the flow that will execute the HTTP Callout.

Create these custom fields on the Opportunity object:

URL (Text)

Short URL (Text)

Short URL Requested (Checkbox)

Then create the HTTP callout async record-triggered flow.

This is how the flow looks after it is completed.

Set up the start element as follows.

Build an assignment element to assign field values. You will assign the input parameters Bit.ly API needs to the Apex defined variable that the “Create HTTP Callout” builder provides us. Initially, enter a fixed URL here, such as SalesforceBreak.com, until you can get the flow to work without issues.

Get your group Id from Bit.ly from your browser address bar when you display this screen here.

The only input parameter that the callout action needs is the Apex defined variable.

The short URL is again inside an Apex defined variable under 2XX>link. We will update this value to the short URL custom field of the Opportunity record.

But you can do all this after properly creating your HTTP callout action. And that requires a few steps.

Read the next post to learn how the HTTP Callout action is set up.

Please continue to the second post by clicking here.

Related links:

Create HTTP Callout – POST 2/3

Create HTTP Callout – POST 3/3

Create HTTP Callout – GET