Salesforce Sidekick

***UPDATE***

My recommendation is to use this solution by Doug instead of following the steps below: https://douglascayers.com/2016/04/18/salesforce-process-builder-scheduler/

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In Apex you’re able to setup a recurring job that will fire whenever you’d like.  However, now that many of the solutions that we previously needed Apex for can be solved through Process Builder and Flow, it would be great if we could setup a schedule to do batch jobs without Apex.  I’ve recently come across more and more clients wanting something to run from every 15 minutes to every business day.  Unfortunately, I’m not savvy enough with Apex (yet!) to feel comfortable writing a trigger just to get this added functionality.  So, that is when I got creative.  With just three workflow rules we are able to setup our own scheduled Flow!  (So that means, we’re not actually going to be building a Flow in this post, sorry!)

How might you use something like this?  Well, you could query Leads and send out emails to groups of them every morning at 8am, or you could recalculate some roll-up fields that you have.  Really, you can do anything that you want!

Things to keep in mind:

• Time-based Workflows fire every 15 minutes in bulk from Salesforce
• A Custom Object for your Scheduling is not Required (but it makes it easier)
• To customize your ‘time’ for the next scheduled process, get comfortable with math!  If you want to do less than a day, you just need to modify the formula to add in the % of a day that it is.

Now that we have an idea of what our end goal is, lets get started!

Create a Custom ‘Scheduling’ Object and Three Custom Fields.

1. Fire Flow [Checkbox]
2. Scheduled Date/Time [Date/Time]
3. Next Scheduled Date/time [Date/Time]

When you’re done, it should look like this:

Notice, in this example we are not adding in record types, picklists, or anything to differentiate between our scheduled jobs.  We are just going over the basics of this process.

Now, lets get to the workflow rules that will make the magic happen!

Workflow Rule #1:

The purpose of this Workflow is to fire our Flow.  We will do a Time-Dependent Workflow Action based off of the Scheduled Date/Time field.  So, whenever that time passes, we want to immediately push this Workflow into the queue to fire off.  In addition to this, we’re going to also want to reset our Scheduled Date/Time field to be null.

So, lets take that concept and put it into a Workflow Rule!

Navigate to create a new Workflow Rule, and select the target Object (in this case Scheduled Flow)

Set our Rule Criteria to be whenever the Scheduled Date/Time is not equal to NULL (leave it blank), and when the Fire Flow checkbox is marked as FALSE.

Lets now go down to our Time-Dependent Workflow Rules and add a Time Trigger.  We want to set it to be 0 Hours or 0 Days from the Scheduled Date/Time.

Now, we need to add in two Field Updates.  The first will be marking our Fire Flow checkbox as TRUE.

The second is to make our Scheduled Date/Time null.

Here is what our finalized Workflow Rule should look like.  If yours looks like this, select Done and Activate your Workflow Rule!

Workflow Rule #2:

The purpose of this Workflow is to be set our Scheduled Date/Time value to our next value.  This way we have it queued up to fire again once the next scheduled date/time happens.

So, lets take that concept and put it into a Workflow Rule! (again)

Navigate to create a new Workflow Rule, and select the target Object (in this case Scheduled Flow).

Set our Rule Criteria to be whenever the Fire Flow checkbox is marked as TRUE.

Now we want to create another Field Update under our Immediate Workflow Actions.  This Field Update is going to be on our Scheduled Date/Time field, and we are going to update it with a ‘formula’ which is essentially just the Next Scheduled Date/Time field.  Make sure that you also check the Re-evaluate Workflow Rule after Field Change.

When you are finished, click Save.  Your Workflow Rule should now look like this:

Great job, now press Done and Activate this Workflow Rule as well.

Workflow Rule #3:

This one is where it can get confusing, so stay with me!  Based on our first Workflow Rule, we are setting the Scheduled Date/Time field to blank — and in our second Workflow Rule we then set the Scheduled Date/Time to be the value in our Next Scheduled Date/Time field.  So, when that series happens we want to then update our Next Scheduled Date/Time with its next value.  This way we are able to stop our two Date/Time fields from looping into an abyss of updates.  You still with me?!

So, lets take that concept and put it into a Workflow Rule!

Navigate to create a new Workflow Rule, and select the target Object (in this case Scheduled Flow)

For this, we want to evaluate our criteria when it is created, and every time it’s edited.  Now, we’re taking off the training wheels and going with a formula for our Criteria!  In this formula we want to only fire this when the Scheduled Date/Time is NOT BLANK and it WAS CHANGED.

The Rule Criteria:

ISCHANGED( Scheduled_Date_Time__c ) && NOT(ISBLANK(Scheduled_Date_Time__c))

Next is to create our Field Update.  This is where it can look more complicated than it really is.  In this field update we are going to add one business day to the value we just put in our Scheduled Date/Time field in our second Workflow Rule.

The Formula for our Date/Time update:

CASE( MOD( DATEVALUE( Scheduled_Date_Time__c ) – DATE( 1900, 1, 7 ), 7 ),
0, Scheduled_Date_Time__c + 1 + 1,
1, Scheduled_Date_Time__c + 0 + 1,
2, Scheduled_Date_Time__c + 0 + 1,
3, Scheduled_Date_Time__c + 0 + 1,
4, Scheduled_Date_Time__c + 0 + 1,
5, Scheduled_Date_Time__c + 2 + 1,
6, Scheduled_Date_Time__c + 2 + 1,
Scheduled_Date_Time__c + 1
)

Notice, in this Formula we adding two numbers to the Scheduled Date/Time.  If you look closely you’ll see that the left number changes, while the right one stays at 1.  On the right side, this is us simply always adding 1 Business Day.

However, when it falls on a ‘Weekend’ value we need to add more days.  So that is what we are doing on the left side.  For instance, 0 = Sunday, so we need to add just one day to get  us to Monday.  If this fires on Friday (5) or Saturday (6) we need to add 2 full Business Days in addition to our 1 Business Day to get to the correct value.  Granted, in this situation we really shouldn’t ever have the Saturday or Sunday event happen, its still best to build as if it might!

And lastly, If you wanted to switch this from being just 1 Business Day to being every 15 minutes you would do some math……. and come up with 0.0104166666667 as your value to replace the 1 with.

If yours looks like this, select Done and Activate your Workflow Rule!

IMPORTANT:  We have successfully built out our three Workflow Rules, but you might have noticed there is one thing missing.  We didn’t reset the Fire Flow checkbox to FALSE.  I like to play things safe and reset the value to FALSE in my Flow or Process Builder.  This way I know that my Flow or Process Builder fired correctly.

Lets go create our record and set our first Date/Time values that will get us started!

Congratulations, you’re done!  With just three Workflow Rules we were able to build our own workflow scheduler!  Tip, if you start to hit some limits (like needing to deal with thousands of records) you can always create additional records on the Scheduled Flow and split your automation into pieces.