Sunshine and Other Unhandled Exceptions

Use Stages in Screen Flow

Stages at the top of the flow screen show your users where they are in the process. It’s simple to set up this progress bar and adds some pizazz to your flow.

10 Steps to Get Started with Salesforce Flow

Here’s my ordered list to help you get started learning Flow. It includes short and long videos, Trailhead modules and projects, hands-on training and “your turn” challenges to help you stretch what you’ve learned.

Starred items I had a role in creating.

1. Watch 4 Short Videos*

Get a very basic understanding of flow and some of the more difficult to grasp concepts. (Watch the first 4 and come back to the loops video later).

2. Complete the trail Build Flows with Flow Builder

This gets you started in Flow Builder and applies concepts you learned in the videos.

Packages: Admin-Friendly Way to Move Metadata to Another Org

I build cool shit in Salesforce that I want to share with other people. How do I do that quickly and easily? I make an unmanaged package.

From Setup, search for and go to Package Manager.
Click New.
Fill out the form. Give yourself credit for creating the package and a way to get more information in applicable.
Don’t check “Managed.” By leaving it unchecked, you allow people who install it to make their own modifications.

Show Records in Tiles in Experience Cloud

Allow experience users to select a record by clicking on a joy-filled image instead of choosing from a boring old list view. Spark joy by adding records to a CMS Collection and adding fields to the object for your image, tagline, etc. and creating a (behind the scenes) boring old list view.

This example is for a community foundation – a nonprofit that helps donors give their money to other organizations that match their passions, like the Seattle Foundation or the Columbus Foundation. Above we see a selection of LGBTQIA organizations and below Animal Welfare orgs.

Ready to start building? Let’s go!

Get Salesforce Practice by Tracking Your Habits

Want more practice learning Salesforce? Don’t have experience beyond Trailhead? Build an app to help you track good or bad habits. This is a win-win-win: hone your app builder skills, improve your habits, and you’ll have a cool app to show off in job interviews.

Salesforce Skills Used

Create a custom object and fields
Create reports
Create dashboard components
Make it mobile friendly
Problem solving: how to turn real life issues into measurable data
Send email every 3 days with stats
Bonus: Screen flow for easy tracking

My version: Migraine Tracking App

Forget record-triggered flows or apex triggers. The real demons are migraine triggers. I want to build an app to track when I have one of my trigger foods and when I have symptoms.

I have a threshold for tolerance of delicious triggers. I can eat some chocolate, dairy or red wine without reaching the threshold and getting sick, but I don’t know what the threshold is. Can building my own tracking app help?

Understand Tricky Flow Concepts

Head on over to the Salesforce Admins blog to watch 5 new videos that I helped create that explain some tricky flow concepts with fun metaphors and images!

“Get Records” is like a big claw that grabs records from your database and
pulls them into Flow as variables!

Are you wondering…

What are the most common types of flow?
Why do I need to store information in variables?
What is a record variable?
Why on earth do I need to “Get Records?” Shouldn’t the records already be there?
What does it mean for a variable to store multiple records?
What are loops?
What are Create Records, Update Records, and Delete Records?

Then these 5 new videos can help!

Year End Tax Receipt for Donors

UPDATE 1/13/23: If you’re installing today from AppExchange, it’s a new version 1.4 that you can run by running a flow called Year End Tax Flow. New detailed instructions below. To install the new version, please uninstall the old version first! Go to Setup, search for “Installed Packages,” find “Year End Tax” and uninstall that.

Easy peasy list of all last year’s donations

Send your donors (contact records only) a tax receipt at the beginning of the new year listing all of last year’s donations. For Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack users, this unmanaged package will generate a table for each donor listing the gifts they made last year. Use your own email to send a tax receipt by email. The table lists the amount, date and, optionally, the campaign name of each donation.

Thanks for the great app, just in time…Simple, easy, elegant, and just what we needed.
David, Eaglesrest.org

So you still want to Salesforce volunteer at a nonprofit?

Here’s what you need to know.

By Gordon Lee

Before the proverbial ink dried on the first article on why you shouldn’t Salesforce volunteer at a nonprofit, I could already sense the exceptions the community would raise that I didn’t have the time to address. The Salesforce Trailblazer Community, after all, is made up of passionate tech nerds who have a keen eye in finding exceptions to things. It’s in our nature since we have to sniff out those nuances to be great at what we do.

Folks sent in anecdotes, counter-points, and personal stories about how their experiences were mutually beneficial and what I put out there was a disservice to the nonprofit world. My opinion is that those experiences are the exception, and don’t reflect the greater trend of nonprofits that are harmed when a volunteer is only using them to get experience.

Nevertheless, there is merit in the exceptions raised. So, this follow-up aims to address those exceptions, and clarify when it is a good idea to Salesforce volunteer at a nonprofit.

Flow: Display Photo or Upload Photo

The flow will display either a photo or remind you to upload one. On any object!

How It Works:

The Flow looks for a file attached to that record with the title “SalesforcePhoto” (or another phrase of your choosing).

The File gets the title from the name of the file when you upload it. If you upload SalesforcePhoto.jpg, the title becomes “SalesforcePhoto.” You could also open the File details in Salesforce and change the title.

If that file is found, it’s previewed thanks to the work of Narender Singh, (of course)!

If not found, it asks you to upload a file from your computer named SalesforcePhoto and attaches it to that record. From then on the, the flow displays the photo!