Process Builder

Let's summarize what we already know about Process Builder:

• Process Builder is a Salesforce feature to automate actions that need to happen in your business processes.
• It comes with a nice, graphical overview of your automated process while you are creating or updating it.
• Process Builder can carry out the following:
  • Create processes using a graphical interface through point-and-click configuration
  • Execute a chain of actions, based on criteria in one place instead of creating multiple workflow rules
  • Automate simple tasks that you can't do with workflow rules without using code
• It launches when a specified event happens (such as the creation of a record or the updating of a specific field), just like workflow rules would.
• Process Builder can be built to be launched by another Process Builder as an action, giving you the power to build reusable processes and call them when needed. This way, you wouldn't need to recreate the logic again and again.
• Processes are defined with the following:
  • Criteria that define when a group of actions needs to be executed
  • Actions to execute immediately when criteria are met
  • Actions that need to be executed in the future (scheduled actions) when criteria are met (not supported for processes that are invocable by another process!)
• Process Builder can execute the same, and even more, actions as workflow rules. It can do the following:
  • Update any related record—not just the record itself or its parent
  • Send an email
  • Create any record
  • Call Apex (it can be used as a replacement for an outbound message to external systems, too)
  • Use a quick action to create a record, update a record, or log a call
  • Invoke another process that is created as Invocable
  • Launch a flow
  • Post to chatter
  • Submit for approval
• Process Builder cannot send outbound messages. This you can only do with workflow rules or Apex.

At this stage, I wanted to create an exercise to showcase the use of Process Builder, and I have a great example in mind, But it requires an approval process first. And we only see that in the next section. So, I'm going to do you a solid. Let's first dive into the next section to learn all about approvals and flows, and, further down the road, we'll create the following:

• A flow with screen elements to easily create a new Movie record, including a director, and a first review, all in one go and from our home page.
• Process Builder that kicks off when a new review is added, to be submitted for approval.
• An approval process to approve or decline a review (because in real life, reviews could be submitted through the web and contain spam. The approval process will update a Status field on our review record with Approved or Rejected.
• We'll adjust our roll-up summary fields on the Movie object to only count the reviews with a status of Approved by adding filters.

Ready to get down to it? Let's continue with the next section then.