Tips & Tricks for Building Advanced Workflow

Building Advanced Workflow Varadarajan Rajaram, Salesforce.com Sean Urban, Deutsche Bank Track: Advanced EE System Administrators

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Agenda
Introduction
Winter ’07 Workflow – What’s new?
Customer case study
Workflow and Approvals @ Deutsche Bank
Best practices
Q&A

Definition
Workflow enables the automation of a business process, in while or part within your organization – from sales, to service, to HR, to finance. It enforces a process within your organization which is consistently followed and improves efficiency and productivity.

Current Workflow Capabilities (Pre Winter ’07)
Automated notification
Review current discount policies on Opportunities
Follow up on Cases for Platinum Customers
Limited action types
Email Alerts
Create Tasks

Winter ’07 Workflow Capabilities
Automate your business processes
Field Updates, Outbound Messages, Approvals
Enforce business processes
Lock down Opportunities when it is closed
Improve customer satisfaction
Initiate a customer survey as soon as a Platinum customer case is closed
Improved data quality
Store only the last 4 digits of the SSN

Winter ’07 Workflow Capabilities
Approval process automation
Simple and complex multi-step processes
Eliminate laborious manual processes
Automate and eliminate your paper-based PTO requests
Enforce business processes
Discount policies – Enforce approvals on large discounts
Campaign spending controls – Force approvals on costly campaigns

Winter ’07 Workflow

Field Update Action
Automatically change the value in a field as a result of a workflow trigger, including owner and record type!

Outbound Message Action
Send a customizable XML message to any desired Web-available listener. No more polling for changes!
Can be used to automate updates to dependent records!
Gain automated asynchronous integration with external systems

Other Workflow Enhancements
Workflow rule limit increased from 50 to 300 per object
More standard objects supported
Opportunity Product
Order Product
Advanced “or” filters
New filter options
Current user
Special date values – Next X days, Last Week etc

Approval Process Automation
Define simple or multi-step approval processes for any object
Specify actions at each step of process
Send approval requests to a queue
Define one or more user hierarchies for approval request routing
Lock the Record from Being Edited
Change Status to “Pending”
PTO Request for US-HQ Submit to Manager for Approval Approved?
Change Status to “Approved”
Set Date Approved
Send PTO Message
Change Status to “Rejected”
Unlock Record

Sean Urban Vice President [email_address]

Deutsche Bank
Leading global investment bank
Leader in Germany and Europe, rapidly expanding in North America, Asia and key emerging markets
€ 1,058 billion in assets
Financial services offered in 73 countries
INDUSTRY: Financial Services EMPLOYEES: 63,435 GEOGRAPHY: Global PRODUCT(S) USED: SFA, Service & Support, Marketing # USERS: 416

Key Challenges
Business Challenge
Legacy Workflow
Disparate System
No form continuity
No Reporting
Technology Challenge
Change is difficult
Hardware costs expensive
Higher Costs
Inefficient workflow
User frustration
Slow time to market for change

The Solution
How did we address the challenges?
Consolidated 175 forms to 52
Leveraged Queues and Assignment rules
Used sControls for dynamic page layouts
Created custom objects for data store
Leveraged profiles and asset data
Products implemented
# Users
Integration points
Training
Business Units affected
Ongoing improvements
DEPLOYMENT DETAILS

Results
What were the results?
Increased functionality
Forms contain more pre-popped functionality
Information is stored in one place
Change is quicker and more cost effective
Reduced application maintenance costs
Information is reportable

Demo Template
Department: Sales Operations
# Users: 65
Key Requirements
Support mobile sales team
Integrate with SAP
Executive visibility
Key Benefits
Eliminated manual order processing
Centralize forecasting
On-demand pipeline visibility
Sample Screen of Demo Here (Add URL Link to Demo)

Varadarajan Rajaram Sr. Product Manager Best Practices Salesforce.com

Best Practices – Workflow
Use Workflow rules judiciously (i.e., just because you have 300 available doesn't mean you have to use them)
Number of rules isn't the performance killer, it's how many of them are actually triggered at once
Workflow actions are not executed in any particular order

Best Practices – Field Updates
Use with read-only fields to enforce business processes. Use descriptive naming conventions
Can only update fields on the record itself, not any of its related records
Not all datatypes supported
Runs as "system" user (i.e., ignores FLS)

Best Practices – Outbound Message
Use to replace polling. Wherever possible to reduce API load
Changing developer name of field does not cascade down to outbound message definition - VERIFY
Although HTTPS, no authentication is performed
Session ID may expire

Best Practices – Approval Processes
If Sandbox environment available, create and test there first
A record can potentially go through multiple approval processes during its lifetime, therefore the entry criteria for each process should be specific enough to make sure it doesn't go through the same process twice
Active processes are ordered (just like assignment or escalation rules), therefore the ordering should be most criteria-specific to least criteria-specific
Modify All Data (MAD) users should use the provided tools (Setup | Data Management | Manage Approval Requests) to perform mass actions on pending approval items
Delegates need to periodically check the new standard report “My Delegated Approval Requests” to get a list of all approval items assigned to users for whom they are a delegate

Approvals Limitations
Serial approvals only, no parallel chains
Ability to approve, reject, reassign, and delegate approval do NOT respect the role hierarchy
Cannot "skip" approval steps
Cannot re-order existing steps – must create new step, insert at appropriate level, and delete old
No reminders

Summary of Key Features
New Workflow Action: Field Update – Automatically change the value in a field as a result of a workflow trigger, including owner and record type! Use Formula Editor wherever applicable to derive value from other fields, expressions, or values.
New Workflow Action: Outbound API Message – Send a customizable XML message to any desired Web-available listener. No more polling for changes! Use it to update dependent records
Approval Process Automation – Create simple or multi-step approval processes to automate and enforce the approval of virtually anything in your company, from sales discount requests, to expense reports, to vacation requests.

Varadarajan Rajaram Sr. Product Manager Sean Urban Vice President QUESTION & ANSWER SESSION Salesforce.com Deutsche Bank

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Tips & Tricks for Building Advanced Workflow

by dreamforce2006 on Nov 02, 2006

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Tips & Tricks for Building Advanced Workflow — Presentation Transcript