Happy Dreamforce everyone! This post ends Wizard New’s Dreamforce special on the Process builder. Three whole posts in one week! I hope you’ve been finding the information on the new process builder helpful.

My first two posts “Dreamforce Special: Hands on the New Process Builder” and “Dreamforce Special: Hands on the New Process Builder – Actions!” provided us with an introduction to the process builder. Today, let us take a look at putting it all together and creating your first process.

Make Up Of  a Process

Building a process in Process Builder four components:

1. Process Name
2. Process Object
3. Criteria
4. Actions

The Name

A process name is very important. Since a process is essentially a series of Workflow Rules that perform actions for a common purpose, the process name will help identify what the process is doing. I know it seems like a straight forward and common sense. As Shakespeare wrote “What’s in a name?” Well, quite a lot. I’ve seen Workflow Rules with incomprehensible names – like simply “Sales Notice.” Okay, is it notifying Sales or is notifying other people about sales? Clear as mud. So make sure you pick a name for your process that will define the intent. For example, let’s say we’re building a process where all the actions will occur base on stage changes for our Eastern Wizard Hat Sales Division. Naming our process something like “Stage Actions for E. Wizard Hat Sales” would make sense.

Each Process also has an “optional” description field. I put optional in quotation marks here because in my opinion – it should be required! A description is a perfect place to provide more clarity about what this process does. I like to put links to my project documents in the description field so I have an easy reference when I forget why I created the process to begin with.

Process Object

The process object is very straight forward. This is the object in Salesforce that will trigger this process based on any creation or edits of records. It works just like Workflow Rules. Unlike Workflow Rules, since we have lots of different actions that can modify and update records – other than the record that triggered the process – you want to think very carefully of what events will trigger your process. Most likely, this will be a very simple question – but give it some thought.

Criteria

Each set of criteria is effectively a workflow rule. It’s the conditions required to trigger the actions associated with it. We can multiple criteria within a process. When a process is triggered, each criteria –  from top to bottom – in evaluated until a criteria that matches the conditions is found. Then, those actions are taken. This is makes the order of your criteria very important. You do not want to place something below a criteria that would result in that particular set of actions to never occur. You also do not want to create two sets of criteria with the intention of having BOTH sets of actions taken. Create one set of criteria for those situations. When you absolutely MUST have two criteria sets – put them in separate processes, but beware – just like Workflow Rules you don’t control the order processes are fired for the same object.

And Action!

We talked about Actions already, so I’ll simply state that actions are the functional part of the process. It’s all the things that will happen when a set of criteria matches a record. Actions can occur immediately or later with a scheduled time.

So Let’s Build a Process Already!

I was going to create an in-depth walk-through of creating your first process. I was going to have tons of screenshots and diagrams and funny puppets with hats explaining everything. Then I thought, let’s try something a bit different. So here it is, a video of building a process in Process Builder. I’m using some new software that will let me record audio this time. I apologize for my voice quality, I was recovering from a cold and lost my voice. I’m also currently limited to 15 minutes so I do not show the actual process in action – but you’ll see enough of how all the components are tied together.