Identify Business Uses for Flow Orchestration
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- List the benefits of using Flow Orchestration to automate a process.
- List the two types of orchestrations.
- List the building blocks of an orchestration.
- Identify business uses for Flow Orchestration.
Before You Start
This module is designed for intermediate Salesforce admins who are familiar with complex Salesforce customization features and have experience using flows. Before you begin this badge, we recommend that you complete the Flow Basics and the Flow Orchestration Basics badges.
Quick Review
Flow Orchestration combines your automated processes into a single workflow, joining multiple flows and mapping out how each flow interacts with one another, just like a conductor directing musicians in an orchestra. This no-code tool turns each flow into a step in your process and organizes them into stages.
This organization gives you more flexibility to create approval processes, a greater ability to assign work to any Salesforce user, and more control over record lifecycles. Streamline any delays between processes and help guide different teams along the way. With Flow Orchestration, you can:
- Coordinate step-by-step activities.
- Show team members where handoffs occur.
- Support parallel workstreams.
- Combine automated actions and manual work items.
- Monitor a process and its associated work items.
Orchestration Types
Flow Orchestration has two main types: autolaunched and record-triggered. The difference lies in how they’re triggered. A record-triggered orchestration runs whenever a specified type of record is created or updated. Invoke an autolaunched orchestration using a custom Apex class, REST API, or a custom URL.
Building Blocks
You build an orchestration using three building blocks: stages, steps, and flows.
Stages
An orchestration must contain at least one stage. A stage contains related actions or steps that you want to group. These steps can be interactive or background tasks. Only one stage can be in progress at a time. You configure the conditions that must be met for each stage to be considered complete. To control when a stage completes, select an exit condition.
Steps
Steps are grouped in stages and can be run sequentially or concurrently. Interactive steps require user interaction while background steps do not.
Flows
All steps require a flow in order to run. An interactive step runs a screen flow. A background step runs an autolaunched flow. You can use an evaluation flow to start a step or to mark an interactive step as complete.
Work Items
When an interactive step in an orchestration runs, it creates a work item and assigns it to a user, group, or queue. The orchestration then sends an email with a link to the specified record page to all assigned users. The work item is completed in the Orchestration Work Guide.
Other Elements and Resources
Similar to flow anatomy, orchestrations also have decision elements and connectors.
A Decision element is a condition checker. It routes users through the orchestration based on the outcomes of those conditions. This element performs what developers call an if-then statement. IF something is true, THEN act; otherwise, check if something ELSE is true.
Connectors define the available paths that an orchestration can take at run time. The path taken is based on when the criteria of a Decision element outcome are met.
Benefits
We’ve described Flow Orchestrator and its potential uses. Let’s talk about the benefits of implementation.
- Increase efficiency and productivity: Parallel work streams reduce the time between tasks and notifications. When you automate task assignment, requests are assigned to the correct users, so they can complete and track all of their assigned work efficiently.
- Reduce errors and save time: Decrease the chances of inaccurate or missing data as users can complete their assigned work without wasting time switching between tools.
- Increase satisfaction for customers and employees: Monitoring tools help your team be proactive in solving problems. Additionally, it provides the necessary visibility to act quickly and effectively.
Follow Along with Trail Together
Want to follow along with an expert as you work through this step? Take a look at this video, part of the Trail Together series.
Use Cases
Flow Orchestration can be tailored to meet the demands of different industries and business goals. Let’s look at some high-level examples.
Use Case: Automate incident management with Flow Orchestration.
Create a response plan for when service agents and operations teams experience a sudden spike in cases related to an incident. The Ops team can then investigate the root cause with Engineering, work with Marketing to reach out to customers, and find a workaround to stay compliant. Parallel work streams can run as the cause of the incident is being researched, decreasing the time to resolution.
Use Case: Organize your sales cycle with Flow Orchestration.
Streamline the complex workstreams involved when a lead is converted from a prospect to a customer. This workstream may involve prospecting, qualification, evaluation, proposal, quote, client approval, closing, and follow through. Build an orchestration to automate sales, account management, order fulfillment, billing, and accounts receivables functions. Then automate handoffs between the teams to ensure the workstream occurs in the proper sequence, all while saving time between tasks.
Use Case: Manage mortgage approvals with Flow Orchestration.
Automate the mortgage application, processing, and underwriting processes. Parallel processes can run when a processor requires additional documents from the title company while running appraisals simultaneously.
Any business process that involves multiple roles and functions is a good fit for Flow Orchestration!
What are some parallel processes that your users run? Imagine the benefits they’ll receive from their processes being automated in a single, streamlined workflow. After you identify a process to automate, the next action is to plan.