Kevin is arguably the world leader in integrating Flow and Slack!

This post is dual-purpose: 1) to educate on how to make a screen flow available in slack and 2) to provide a downloadable example of a real world use case. 

This previous blog post (https://unofficialsf.com/running-screen-flows-in-slack/) provides exceptional detail into how Salesforce screen flows can be sent into Slack, including the required permissions and initial setup steps. This post assumes you have authorized Slack to connect with Salesforce and focuses on the flows and use cases themselves.

In short, Slack screen flows depend on _two_ flows being created: 

• the first, the actual screen flow that serves as the modal UI for end users in slack.
  • This flow must be activated before the second flow
• and the second, the “dispatching” flow that sends the screen flow to the Slack channel/user of your choice. 

Example Use Case and Demo Component:

If you have not yet begun to leverage Swarming in your customer service operations, it is an incredibly effective way for customer service agents to get answers faster by bringing in the right team of experts to collaborate and work toward a resolution. Rather than using chatter for that collaboration, Slack allows that team of experts to communicate in near real time in slack channels connected to Swarms, a new standard Salesforce object. 

The general premise of a swarm is simple: an agent is working on a case (or problem, incident or change request!) in Salesforce and needs help. The out of the box “Begin Swarming” flow allows the agent to create a channel in Slack directly from the Service Console, invite team members to the slack channel, and creates a Swarm and Swarm Member object(s) related to the case. The channel in slack serves as the collaborative hub for the team to solve the issue, and contains a button with the option to “Finish Swarming”. The bidirectional aspect of this scenario is unfortunately limited.  Clicking Finish Swarm merely closes the swarm object record. A subsequent Salesforce release included a second flow which would auto close the case as well; however, this process is lacking the ability for members of the slack channel to make additional edits to the case or make free text commentary to summarize their findings. 

This packaged solution aims to supplement the swarming experience by providing a more ample wrap up opportunity. It hinges upon two flows: a record triggered flow on the Swarm object that “dispatches” a separate screen flow to slack.

Upon closure of the swarm, a message is sent into the swarm channel with a button to open a screen flow. The recipient, message, and button are cofnigured within the dispatching flow. The screen flow contains multiple input fields which will then update the record related to the swarm. Once installed, the screen flow is configured to update the following fields:

• Case
  • Status
  • Case Reason
  • Close Summary Notes (a custom field included in the package; give your users access via the Swarm Wrap Up Slack Flow permission set and add to page layout as desired)
• Problem
  • Status
  • Root Cause Summary
• Change Request
  • Status
  • Close Summary (a custom field included in the package; give your users access via the Swarm Wrap Up Slack Flow permission set and add to page layout as desired)
• Incident
  • Status
  • Resolution Summary

The fields available for input and update can be configured by updating the “wrap up screen” and “update records” elements within the screen flow. See attached video. 

Pre install steps

• Assumes you’ve enabled the slack to Salesforce integration, swarming, and your user has authenticated the service cloud for slack app

Post install steps

• Assign “Swarm Wrap Up Slack Flow” Permission Set to swarming users so that they may edit the Case.Close Summary Notes and Change Request.Close Summary fields
  • Add these fields to page layouts if desired
• Edit the “Swarm Wrap Up Slack Dispatching Flow” so that it points to your authenticated Slack workspace

Videos

Install

Install Unmanaged Package

For a long time, we’ve wanted to address the manageability gap that Flow has regarding version control: There has never been a practical way to compare two versions. This new Flow application provides a set of comparison tools.

Here’s an example of the kind of report that gets generated when two versions are compared:

The initial release includes several useful analysis modules, but hopefully that’s just the start. Analyze Flows is designed as a framework so that additional analysis plugins can be added to it. Right now, it doesn’t have 100% coverage for all possible changes, but if there’s interest in this, we should be able to keep adding coverage.

To use the Analyze Flows tool, install this package, and run the Analyze Flows flow. Select two versions of the same flow. As an example, we’ll analyze this flow:

Let’s compare version 3 to version 2:

Note that you need to set up a Remote Site Setting to authorize Flow to make use of your org’s external API’s.

Here’s the report that’s generated:

The report points out that an Update Record element called Update Case was removed. Let’s visually verify that. Here’s version 2 and version 3, side by side:

Now let’s compare version 3 to version 4:

There are a couple of new Assignment elements. Let’s run the analysis:

There’s a bunch of information here:

1. The first two rows report the presence of two completely new Assignment elements. These are the ones in the red box, above.
2. The next three rows, however, refer to a different element. It’s also an Assignment element, but it’s the one called ‘Assign to Variable:

This ‘Assign to Variable’ element is present in both Version 3 and Version 4. However, it’s configuration has changed. And here some of the power of Analyze Flows is displayed. The fifth line of our report draws attention to an ‘AssignmentItem’ that now has a value of 67. This turns out to be the right-hand-side of one of the Assignment Rows. Let’s compare version 3 and version 4, but focus on the property editor of that one element:

In V1, this configuration-level comparison is supported for: Create Records, Delete Records, Update Records, Screen, Action, Start, Subflow, Decision, Assignment

Not Yet Supported

Wait, Loop, Formula, Choice, Text Template, Steps and Stages (Orchestration), Process Metadata Values, Rollback Records

Install

Note: this requires version 3.12+ of Actions Base Pack and version 3.0.18+ of Screen Components Base Pack

V 1.0.1 1/18/23 Production Sandbox Requires version 3.12+ of Actions Base Pack. Fixes the ‘Apex Type not found’ bugs

Source

view source

Old Releases

V 1.0 1/10/23 Production Sandbox Initial Release

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Developer Notes

Dual Flow Version Selector Screen Component

This new lwc enables the selection of two specific versions of two flows:

It returns the names of the selected flows. Note that it appends the selected version number to the apiName, like this: Test_Flow-1. This is how you request a particular version when retrieving Flow metadata.

It’s available for reuse.

Editor’s Note: UnofficialSF is pleased to enable commercial creators of Flow extensions like Drive Connect to introduce their products and demonstrate useful use cases. One of our goals is to see a rich tier of commercial solutions in addition to the many free extensions that will continue to be available.

Content provided by Drive Connect

Drive Connect leverages Salesforce flows to automate the creation of files and folders in Google Drive and associate them to the appropriate Salesforce records by storing their url links as content version records. Now users can create intricate folder structures within seconds rather than wasting time in Google Drive, without any code!

Drive Connect was built to work natively in Salesforce. The Automate Drive Flow action has a custom property editor that simplifies the process of building your Drive operations. Some common use cases include:

• Automating the creation of folders for your accounts upon record creation, then creating folders for the opportunities that will live under the account folder
• Automation of quotes, orders, or proposals using our merge field based templates on Opportunity Closed Won stage
• Linking existing account folders to new opportunities upon record creation

Understanding Automate Drive Options

The Automate Drive action allows you to execute a wide variety of functions from Salesforce. Drive Connect requires a record ID to know what is the record initiating the operations, and the most common means of getting this ID is to trigger the flow via a record change. Multiple actions can be built to execute in a specific sequence and hierarchically all from within the custom property editor. Let’s get familiar with what each operation does at a high level.

• New Drive Folder – The ability to create new folders in Google Drive. You are able to leverage native Salesforce merge fields to create custom folder names (example: you can create a folder with the same name as the record triggering your flow). You are also able to choose the destination of where the folders will live in Google Drive. 
• New Folder Link – Link an existing folder from either a lookup relationship on the object or from selecting a folder in Google Drive
• New File Link – Link an existing file from either a lookup relationship on the object or from selecting a file from your Google Drive.
• Update Drive Folder – Choose a folder to update the name or the location of. This is useful when you want to move an opportunity folder to a different location once the stage has hit Closed Won or Closed Lost.
• Update Drive File – Choose a file to update the name or location of.
• New File from Template – This operation will generate a document leveraging Drive Connect’s document generation functionality. You’ll need to choose a template, the file format it will be formatted as (PDF, Google format, or Microsoft equivalent), and the resulting file will be created in Google Drive.

Additionally, you can add child operations to many of the operations listed above without having to add a new flow action. Examples of these are:

• Save a copy of the file to Salesforce
• Create a shortcut of the file in a different location
• Link the file to a parent record via lookup relationships
• Update a field on the record with either an ID or URL of your choice

Take a look at our help documentation for a full overview of our drive operations.

Use Case Example 1: Automatic Folder Creation for Accounts and Opportunities Based on the Stage field.

Let’s take a look at a common use case where a Salesforce org needs proper naming conventions for their Google Drive folders for Accounts and Opportunities. Everyone is familiar with a cluttered and unorganized drive, thankfully Drive Connect can provide order to how your folders are structured so employees can always find what they are looking for.

First off, you’ll need to install the Drive Connect app. We offer a 14 day free trial so you can set up this entire automation and see it in action before purchasing. 

Alright, let’s move on to our first use case. MarvelPoint Real Estate is using Salesforce to keep track of its sales pipeline. Currently the sales team is manually creating folders for their accounts in a “Clients” folder in a shared drive. When a new opportunity arises, they manually create a folder in Google Drive under that account. Ideally the name of that folder is the same as the Opportunity name.  

In this opportunity folder, 2 folders need to be created. One is for “Legal” and one is for “Pictures”. 

In order to keep track of the right folder in Salesforce, they created a custom URL field on the object. The salesperson needs to remember to copy the Drive Folder URL and paste it into the field, otherwise there would be 0 connection between the two systems.

This needed to be done for every Account that was created in Salesforce and is a tedious task to do manually. MarvelPoint was seeking a better way in organizing their folders and files as the team often forgot to create the folders in the right naming structure, which led to duplicate folders.

This is where Drive Connect and Salesforce Flows come into play. MarvelPoint wants to create a flow that will automate the creation of their folders.

The first thing they do is create a new flow. Since MarvelPoint wants to create a new folder for all new accounts being created, let’s start there.

Drive Connect leverages Record Triggered Flows in Salesforce to run automations.

Let’s choose the Account object to trigger this flow. Since MarvelPoint wants folders to be created for all new accounts created, let’s leave the other options as default.

Next, we will add an action and search for the Automate Drive action. For this flow, we will use the New Drive Folder action. Here we will create a folder using the account name. You can select a field from the Account object or one that is related to the account object via lookup.

Next, we will choose a destination for the folders to live under. MarvelPoint desired to place their account folders under a shared drive called “Clients”.

Linking the folder to the record simply requires you to check the checkbox. We’ll also want to upload files to this folder so checking it as the default record folder will have any new files and folders created from that record default to live under that folder.

An additional request from MarvelPoint was to create an “Opportunities” folder under this account folder to house all of their opportunities. In order to do so, a child operation must be created under the folder we just created where you will use the New Drive Folder operation again. Multiple child folders can be created under a parent folder and child folders can even be created under those child folders if desired.

Here is a demo video showing you how to set up a similar flow we just described.

Alright, so we’ve completed our folder structure for the accounts folder. Once that’s activated, we can go ahead and create another flow for our Opportunities.

Use Case Example 2: Creating and Linking a Child Folder Conditionally

This use case will behave similarly to the last, but the stipulation for this flow is that we only want to create a folder if the stage has hit “Qualification” as Marvelpoint does not want to create folders for unqualified records. We also only want this to run once so we should only allow the flow to run when the record is updated to meet this specific condition.

Now let’s add an Automate Drive action. We will create a New Drive Folder with the name of the opportunity using a merge field. We want the destination of this folder to live under the Account folder’s subfolder called “Opportunities”, so we will choose the option “Folder in Parent Record’s Default Record Folder”. Next we need to choose which lookup field from the opportunity record to be the parent folder, which in this case is the account lookup field. Then we will type in the name of the subfolder, which is “Opportunities”.  

We will also create two child folders, one named “legal” and one named “photos”. 

Use Case Example 3: Creating a Document in a Folder

Finally, let’s create a child operation under the legal folder and place a document in it. The action we will choose is the File from Template option. From here we will choose a template from our templates folder that can be created using Drive Connect’s Document Generation technology. We will create an NDA document as part of this automation. This document will live in the legal folder as every opportunity will need its own NDA. 

That’s all that MarvelPoint needs to get their sales team going so let’s save and activate this flow as well.

Now that our flows are activated, let’s see it in action. First, let’s create a new account. Once the account is created, we’ll see the Google Drive folder with the name of the account linked to the record. 

When clicking on the folder, notice that our “Opportunities” folder lives within it.

If we create an Opportunity record in Salesforce and change the status to “Qualified”, we’ll see files and folders created in Google Drive. 

Clicking on the folder will show you your subfolders and if we click on the legal folder, you’ll see the NDA document in there and ready to be sent off.

Now MarvelPoint’s sales people will never be confused about where to upload their documents when working on their deals. On top of that, MarvelPoint is experiencing significant cost savings since they moved all their files to Google Drive from Salesforce.

Learn more about DriveConnect at https://driveconnect.me/, or check out our AppExchange listing! We offer a 14 day free trial of the app, no credit card required.