Add a Screen to Your Flow and Get Records

Learning Objectives

In this project, you’ll:

Use Flow Builder to create and send an email with information stored in Salesforce records and Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) fields.
Learn the basics of Screen, Get Records, Action, Assignment, and Update Records elements.
Use flow Resources to create a text template for email.
Add a flow to a Lightning Page and set component visibility.

Before You Start

Before you complete any steps in this module, make sure you complete the hands-on challenges in Set Up a Nonprofit Success Pack Trial for Trailhead using the same Trailhead Playground. The work you do in the hands-on challenges here builds on the work you complete in that badge.

Set Up a Nonprofit Success Pack Trial for Trailhead

An Easier Way to Show Gratitude

Development Director Aniyah Thompson and her fundraising staff work to send donor acknowledgments.

Aniyah Thompson, Development Director at the nonprofit No More Homelessness (NMH) would like to say thank you.

No, not to you—to her donors.

NMH is experiencing a deluge of donations. The organization’s fundraising and marketing efforts for its capital campaign have provided a lot of visibility for the nonprofit, and the staff is looking for a new way to keep up with donor acknowledgment messages. Aniyah would like her staff to have an easy way to thank donors. She wants to send a short, templated message directly from closed won opportunity records and have a chance to review each message before it goes out.

Gorav Patel, NMH’s amazing Salesforce Admin, thinks he has a way to build what Aniyah needs: Flow Builder.

In this project you’ll follow Gorav’s process to create a flow that gets details from opportunity and contact records, inserts them into an email text template, generates a preview of the email, sends the message, and updates the opportunity record to show that the gift has been acknowledged.

There are many ways to achieve Aniyah’s goals: Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) has a built-in Email Acknowledgments tool, for example. If you want something even more automated that integrates with other systems, check out Salesforce AppExchange and talk with your Salesforce Account Executive.

Introducing Flow Builder

Flow Builder is a tool to build automations with clicks, not code, for every Salesforce app, experience, and portal. You create flows by connecting a few provided elements.

A completed flow in Flow Builder

While there are many types of flows, the ones you will use most often will likely be:

Screen flows, which automate business processes that require direct user interaction, such as inputting data. (This project will build a screen flow.)
Autolaunched flows, which automate a process in the background without user interaction, such as on a particular schedule or when a record changes. (Check out the Build a Discount Calculator project on Trailhead for an example of this type of flow.)

Flows can create and update records, create tasks and events, send email, and more.

This project is designed to teach you a few basic principles of flow—like using Screen elements, getting and updating records, creating text templates, and sending email—and it isn’t a full solution. There are plenty of ways to achieve Aniyah’s goals, and you might already have one in place.

Once you complete this project, though, you’ll have the knowledge to build flows for templated emails to send to donors, volunteers, and other constituents.

To complete this module, you need a special Developer Edition org that contains Nonprofit Success Pack and our sample data. Get the free Developer Edition and connect it to Trailhead now so you can complete the challenges in this module. Always check that you’re using the Trailhead Playground or special Developer Edition org that we recommend.

Start Your Flow

Once you’ve set up NPSP in the prerequisite project, it’s time to start your flow.

Click Setup () and then Setup.
Type flows in the Quick Find box and click Flows in the Process Automation section.
Click New Flow.
Select the type of flow you want to create. For this project select Screen Flow, the default, because you will launch this flow from opportunity records and it needs user interaction.
Click Create.

A Brief Tour of Flow Builder

Now you’re in Flow Builder. Let’s start with a quick primer on the elements of Flow Builder, just so we’re using the same terms going forward.

Flow Builder with a blank flow

The Toolbox (1) is where you will find the components of the flow as they are created. These can be either Elements (interactions, logic, and data) or Resources (containers that hold information, like variables, constants, formulas, and text templates). You’ll use both Elements and Resources in this project. You open and close the toolbox by clicking .
The Canvas (2) is where you build your flow by adding Elements. You’ll notice that the canvas already includes Start and End elements, with an Add element button () between them.

Add Your First Screen

Start by adding a Screen element to the canvas.

Screens are a way to collect information from users or display information. In this project, the Screen element will appear on the opportunity record page to give users a simple interface to preview and send their email.

The screen flow in its final destination on an opportunity record

Add the Screen now.

Click Add element () between Start and End.
Select Screen in the Interaction section.
In the New Screen interface that appears, add these properties:

Label: Launch. This is the title that will appear on the canvas and help you keep track of what each element does.
API Name: Launch (This should generate automatically.)
Description: This screen is embedded on the opportunity Lightning Page and allows the user to start the flow. Don’t neglect your descriptions! Flow is a complicated tool and descriptions can help you and other admins keep track of what each piece does.
Configure Header: Deselect Show Header. The header shows the name of the flow at the top of the screen, and you won’t need it for this project.

Now you need to add at least one component to the new screen. Components provide input fields or display text to guide users to the next step in your screen flow. In this flow you want to display a message prompting the user to begin, so drag Display Text, under the Display category in Components, onto the screen canvas.
In the Display Text options fields that appear, enter these details:

API Name: displayText
In the text editor, add this text: Ready to acknowledge this gift? Click Next.
Optionally, you can spruce up your screen by using rich-text editing features or adding an image to the text area by clicking Image () in the text editor’s controls.

Click Done.

The Screen element in the flow

Notice how we capitalized Text in displayText? That’s called camel case, when you capitalize each new word in text without spaces. It’s a way to make your API names, which can’t use spaces, more readable—and make you feel like you’re really tech-savvy.

Save Your Flow

There’s still a lot of work to do, but just as every epic journey begins with a first step, so, too, does a great flow begin with a first element.

Before you move on, save your work.

Click Save.
Enter these details:

Flow Label: Gift Acknowledgment
Flow API Name (should automatically generate): Gift_Acknowledgment
Description: Screen element that sends a gift acknowledgment email to donors after allowing users to first preview the email on an opportunity record.

Click Save.

If you’d like, you can click Run to see what you’ve built so far. It’s a fine Screen element, but it doesn’t do anything yet.

In the next step you get data and create your email template.

To complete this step and move on, launch your Trailhead Playground and click Verify to check that your new flow and the Screen element are saved correctly. If that seems too easy, just stay with us. You'll have plenty to do in your Playground in subsequent steps!