Salesforce Flow is the future of automation across the Salesforce platform – a fact that’s been acknowledged for a long time. Salesforce have been channeling a huge amount of resources into developing Flow innovations; their aim is for powerful automation capabilities to unify products across their portfolio.
We’re all familiar with Salesforce’s core products (Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, etc.) and underneath these is the Salesforce platform, a “set of horizontal capabilities” – tools that enable Salesforce customers to implement Salesforce how they wish. The Salesforce platform will now tap directly into other products: Slack, Tableau, and MuleSoft, in particular.
These Flow innovations will be unveiled at Trailblazer DX ‘22, themed as “the year of the developer”. However, with the rise in developer burnout, Salesforce recognizes that Flow will play a huge part in empowering low-code individuals.
And there are some impressive numbers to date. Salesforce powers 1 trillion+ automations every month – that’s approximately 44 million every day. The business value is estimated at $2 trillion.
- Flow Orchestrator
- Flow in Slack
- Flow Actions for Tableau
- Flow Integration (MuleSoft + Flow)
- Flow RPA
Flow Orchestrator
Orchestrator is all about using automation to simplify multi-step/multi-user flows – those long, complex flows that require multiple people to interact (e.g. approvals) or multiple systems.
We’ve already seen what’s possible with Flow Orchestrator, which is now generally available (coming out of Beta).
Flow in Slack
Build Slack-first automations with full support for Salesforce data and actions – in other words, the “clicks/low-code” capabilities within the new Salesforce Platform for Slack.
You can take Salesforce Flow and connect it with actions in Slack. For example, if the status of an Opportunity changes and users want to collaborate in a Slack Deal Room, you can automatically create this channel using Salesforce Flow.
- Slack Actions: Turn time-consuming and manual tasks into fully automated workflows using low-code tools, e.g. creating Slack channels to collaborate with stakeholders or sending account status updates to colleagues.
- Screen Flows: Build multi-step, guided workflows in Salesforce that can be reused within Slack, all with just clicks.
Flow Actions for Tableau
To unlock the value of data, automation will close the loop between insight and action. In other words, Tableau will be integrated with Salesforce Flow, so users can trigger automated actions directly from a Tableau dashboard. It’s a big leap to unify these products.
This is an announcement that will interest both pro-code and low-code Salesforce professionals, to advance business processes and eliminate the friction from having to flip between multiple applications.
Flow Integration (MuleSoft + Flow)
MuleSoft announced tighter integration into the Salesforce platform, part of which will enable developers to create composable building blocks (i.e. APIs) that can be shared in Flow, for low-code professionals (such as Salesforce Admins) to use.
In short: Connect third-party systems right into Flow.
With the rise in developer burnout, MuleSoft recognizes that low-code individuals can leverage composable building blocks so that developers don’t have to shoulder all integration work.
Flow RPA
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) technology will also be integrated into Flow. This technology is supplied by MuleSoft (the Servicetrace acquisition coming into fruition).
Availability
- Flow in Slack is expected to be available in beta in June 2022, and generally available in October 2022.
- Flow Orchestration is currently available.
- Flow Integration is currently available, however, the integration into Flow Builder will be available in the second half of 2022.
- Flow RPA is expected to be available in the second half of 2022.