Connect Records with Record Association Builder

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Explain Record Association Builder.
  
• Define a new association criteria record.
  

Flexible Performance Tracking with Record Association Builder

In the last unit, you set up a branch, a banker, and connected them.

When you create a few records and connections like this, manual connections make sense. To automatically connect more records in the course of your team’s day-to-day work, however, use Record Association Builder.

With Record Association Builder, you define rules called Association Criteria to automatically link new and updated records to the branches responsible for those records. When a record meets association criteria, Record Association Builder automatically creates a branch unit related record or branch unit customer record to attribute those records to a branch unit and banker without manual data entry.

Association criteria works with Salesforce standard objects, such as Account, Opportunity, and Case, as well as Financial Services-specific objects, such as Financial Accounts and Assets and Liabilities. It also supports custom objects.

By automating record associations, Branch Management generates a wealth of insights about work attribution, productivity, and key performance indicators (KPIs) across branches. This data enables tracking and reporting on the productivity and performance of branches, employees, and customer segments.

For example, by using this data you can build a report to track the number of high-net-worth clients or hot leads created for each branch, then compare the output across branches. If you use Tableau, you can also build complex reports to explore branch structures and their aggregated productivity.

In this unit, you follow an example to explore how to configure Record Association Builder with association criteria.

Define Association Criteria

Imagine that the branch manager at the MG Road branch from the last unit wants to track when qualified leads for their branch are created.

Create an association criteria record to track those leads.

1. From Setup, in the Quick Find box, enter record association, and select Record Association Builder.
   
2. Click New Criteria.
   
3. In the New Criteria window, specify these details.
   
   • Name: Qualified Leads
   • API Name: Qualified_Leads populates automatically
     
   • Association Type: BranchManagement
     
   • Description: Leads with a Status value of Qualified.
   • Reference Object: Lead
     
   • Event Type: Create
     
   • Precondition: ISPICKVAL([Lead].Status , "Qualified")
   • Activation: Active
     
     
4. Save your work.
   

With this criteria active, new leads that match the precondition formula will automatically be assigned to the branch where they are created.

This happens when the record is created, because the Event Type value is Create. If you want to associate existing records when a field changes, set the Event Type to Update. In either Create or Update, the association criteria only affects records after the criteria is active, it doesn’t work retroactively.

One reference object can have up to five association criteria, so in addition to this association criteria, you could create four more for the Lead object.

Create Advanced Associations

Simple associations work in many scenarios, but Record Association Builder also supports tools to build more advanced associations.

First, you can change how record associations are created. By default, Record Association Builder uses the Owner ID field on a reference object when creating association records. That means that the record is associated with the same branch as the record’s owner. You can specify a different ID field by selecting Use an alternate owner ID for association criteria. The alternate owner ID field only links to a user or contact related to a banker record.

For more advanced associations, Record Association Builder supports using a custom Apex class. For details and requirements, check out Define Custom Apex Class Logic to Create Associations in Salesforce Help.

What’s Next?

In this unit you learned how to automate record connections using Record Association Builder. You explored an example associated criteria record to link new leads to their responsible branches. You also learned about options for advanced record associations.

In the next unit, you see how all of this work comes together for bankers and branch managers as they use Branch Management in the course of their work.

Resources

• Salesforce Help: Record Association Builder
• Salesforce Help: Define Association Criteria
• Salesforce Help: Define Custom Apex Class Logic to Create Associations