What is workflow automation and what can it do for me?

Workflow is one of the most powerful native tools available in Salesforce. The feature is available in Enterprise and Unlimited Edition, and for many, it is the sole reason to upgrade from Professional.

So what exactly is Workflow? Workflow is business logic that evaluates records as they are created and updated and determines if an automated action needs to occur. In a way it allows records to speak up or do something – update data, notify people or external systems. Workflow replaces the constant monitoring Users have to otherwise do via reports, dashboard or views to know whether or not it is time to act. At the end of the day workflow accelerates your business processes, by removing the time lag needed for people to review information and decide if action is need. As your business grows, and the amount of data that has to be monitored swells, workflow becomes indispensible to organizations to maximize efficiency with their business processes.

The use cases are unlimited. Do you need a field value to automatically change when two other fields on a record are updated in the right combination? Do you need to send an email to an external vendor (non-Salesforce User) after a certain number of days after a record has been updated? Do you want o assign a Task to a Salesforce User to let them know they need to review or update a record now that it has reached a certain stage? Once you know what workflow you can do it won’t be long before you start dreaming up applications to help your business.

Here is a Step-by-Step tutorial on How to Configure Salesforce Workflow.

For more on this subject, see our ShellBlack Whiteboard episode: Workflow Rules Part 1 – Overview, Evaluation and Rule Criteria