Don’t know what to write to a customer or a major donor? Not sure how to be kind and encourage someone to try a little harder next time? ChatGPT can do that for you. And now you can use it right inside Salesforce to respond to your emails.
My colleague Brian Ricter wrote an apex class connecting Flow with ChatGPT. It takes a string, sends that as the prompt to ChatGPT and returns the response. You can use this apex action in a flow to do anything you want with ChatGPT!
I’ve utilized Brian’s apex action in a screen flow that helps you respond to a contact’s most recent email. And I’ve packaged it up for you to install easily.
Actually, I don’t know when this change happened, but I just noticed that Flow loops now only have four steps instead of five. The two assignments can now be consolidated into one.
You still have to add the record to a collection, but you can use the same assignment element.
Example 1: Update the record currently in the loop.
Use a Get Records element to create a collection of records to loop through.
Add a loop element
Add ONE assignment element
Update field values for record currently in the loop.
Create a new record collection variable to hold the records you want to update.
Use the same assignment element to add the record currently in the loop to the new collection.
Add an Update Records element to update the records in your new collection.
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Example 2: Create new records.
Use a Get Records element to create a collection of records to loop through.
Add a loop element
Add ONE assignment element
Create a new record variable (not collection) to hold the values of the new record you want to create.
Assign field values to your new record variable.
Create a new record collection variable to hold your records that you want to create.
Use the same assignment element to add the record currently in the loop to the new collection.
Close the loop.
Add a Create Records element to create the records in your new collection.
Previously step 3 involved two assignment elements!
Watch this recording on Flow loops.
This is how you would combine steps 3 and 4 into one assignment!
Log an email message on the contact record like this one.
UPDATE SUMMER ’23: This is no longer necessary! Read here.
When sending email from a contact record, it magically logs the message to your activity log. In classic, emails were/are automatically logged to the Activities related list. Well, flow doesn’t do that for you. Let me show you how to log it so you and your colleagues know when an email was sent to a contact.
After you add a “Send Email” action to your flow, add two more Create Records elements to the canvas. You will create records of these objects:
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.
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?
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.
Package includes this sample template.
Thanks for the great app, just in time…Simple, easy, elegant, and just what we needed.
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 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!
We are using the app because constituents and donors are more than just a record, and seeing their faces humanizes the data.