Working with Rich Web Data in Flow

This is a PREVIEW of Summer 19 Functionality. Please make your purchase decisions based only on generally available products.

Let’s recall the problem we’re trying to solve. The web data that’s returned by our Mulesoft product API packs three different SKU’s into a single ‘WebProduct’. Every time we get a result from this API, we need to unpack it and create multiple Product records in Salesforce:

Here’s the flow we’ll use:

The two Extract assignment elements are extremely important: they take the two Lists that are part of the product and store them in variables. But we handle them slightly differently. Recall that this is what the object looks like:

Because the picture URLS are simple strings:

we can create a standard collection variable of type Text to store them as a group:

But the identifiers are more complicated:

so we store them in a resource that uses the new Apex-Defined type:

Here’s how we configure one of the resources we’ll use:

Note how you select the specific Apex Class that indicates the structure of the data you’ll be storing.

Extracting Subobjects

An important part of the process is extracting copies of the subobjects (in our case it’s the SKU identifiers and the URL Product Images) into record collection variables that use the new Apex-Defined type. Once the data is in record collection variables, we can Loop over it in Flow.

Note the use of dot notation in the Value field. I was able to select this value without typing:

However if you need to go more than one level deep, you’ll have to type in the dot notation yourself, as in the case of the Pricein this example:

Recall that our goal is to end up with three products. We generate the product data by looping over the identifiers and assembling a collection of products. A second loop enables us to add the appropriate picture URL to each of the products. Finally, we save the collection of records to Salesforce.

Good luck with your flows!

The old version of Load Web Page used an event-based architecture that doesn’t work in all Salesforce environment.

Here’s a new version that should work everywhere: Install

Provide it with a url that has the “http://” in front of it.

Users can start flows and then pause them, and those same flows can be made to appear on the user’s Contact record where an agent can resume and complete the flow.

This requires and relies on the Guided Action List’s ability to find and display all paused flows associated with a record.

The Community user must be a signed in Salesforce user. They can’t be a Guest User.

Flows can be linked to a Record

Flow provides a mechanism that allows individual flows to be linked to records. This means that a flow about a Contact can be linked to a particular Contact via that Contact’s Id. Or a flow could be linked to an Asset or a custom object record. The main benefit of doing this is that when the record page is displayed for that record, if the record page has a Guided Action List component, it will display all the linked flows that are 1) In Progress or 2) Paused. And in the case of flows that are Paused, the user looking at the record page can resume the flow.

Enable Flow Handoffs By Linking The Flow To the User

In order for a Flow started in Community Cloud to be resumable by an agent in Service Cloud, have the Flow populate the Flow Global Variable $Flow.CurrentRecord must be assigned the value of the current UserId.

Tip: The Contact Id of the currently logged-in Community user is the same as their UserId.

Flow provides access to the Global Variable $User and $User.Id will return the currently logged-in user’s Id. Assign this value to the recordId resource that you created:

When the Guided Action List is on a record page, it queries to see if there are any Flows in progress or paused that are linked to the current recordId, and it does this by checking for the presence of a value in a resource called recordId. So, you will need to be on the Contact page corresponding to the user in order to see their paused flows.

A final note: The Guided Action List component is only available in the Lightning Experience so you’ll need to be in Lightning to use this process.

There are scenarios where you need to know the distance between two specific cities and use it in your flows. Now you can easily do it using this new flow action. Grab an unmanaged package here, install it to you Salesforce organization and add it to your flow. Alternatively, you can grab the source code from GitHub and push to your org.

Internally this action utilizes Google Maps API so you will need to get developer key. You can request one here. After you got the key and installed the package, go to Setup -> Custom Metadata Types -> Google API Key (click ‘Manage Records‘ next to it). There will be just one record of this type: open it and paste your developer key into Key field.

Configuring Google developer key

The configuration is pretty straightforward: give it two cities (optionally with country names for disambiguity) and use the output distance measured in miles or kilometers.

Input values configuration

Output values configuration

If everything is fine parameter Is Success will contain True value. Otherwise, it becomes False, and Error Message will contain detailed description of the error (e.g. source or destination were not found or there are no routes between them). The distance (both in miles and in kilometers) are rounded up to 3 digits.

Example of the message constructed from the output parameters

Source Location and Destination Location output parameters are the source and destination input parameters converted to a universal form City, State, Country (e.g. Los Angeles, CA, USA)