Salesforce Sidekick

For those of you that are already using Wave Analytics in a Production environment, you hopefully took a look at the Wave Data Monitor when scheduling your Dataflow.  If you’re working in a Full Sandbox or Production environment and running the Dataflow, you’re typically dealing with large data volumes.  In those scenarios, you really want to make sure your Dataflow is built correctly, because that is when you can start hitting some longer times to refresh your data.

Optimize!  Only Import Records Once

As of Summer ’17, this will be much easier to do!  Importing your list of Accounts three times into Wave is silly.  Reuse the “Extract Account” node for anything that is referencing the Account.  Don’t extract all of your Accounts more than once.  You can use a recipe to do the filtering (if any) that needs to be done on your Dataset.  As mentioned, with the new Dataflow builder, this is going to be much easier and not require any JSON code.  However, you’ve got to be aware of the potential issue and make sure you put the effort into reusing your different sfdcDigests that are extracting records.

Use Incremental Loading Where Possible [Enable Replication (Winter ’17)]

Why would you want to bring in records that haven’t changed?  This allows you to speed up your Dataflow by reducing the records added in and only finding those recently modified.  By default, after Winter ’17, if you have Replication Enabled you’ll have this enabled.  This allows you to only update records that have changed since your Dataflow last ran.  This is a huge boost for speed.  If you have millions or hundreds of millions of records, you’ll greatly benefit from this feature.

Don’t Bring In Every Field

If you add every Account field into your dataset, that is going to add more data that Wave has to grab.  While Wave is extremely fast, if you don’t need it… don’t bring it over!  You’re just slowing down how long your Dataflow takes to run, and adding in extra fields that you don’t need in your Lens.  From personal experience, any Long Area Text fields are the worst.

TLDR: Don’t bring in any extra records, extra fields, and turn on Replication (Incremental Loading).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are many similarities with a Flow Loop and a manual Data Update using Excel. We’re going to walk through a process and compare throughout how the Excel steps relate to the Flow.  When I say Flow Loop, I’m referring process of using a Fast Lookup, Looping through the records, and then Updating the records in a Fast Update.  (If you’ve got a better way to describe it, let me know!)

The below Flow is reassigning all of our Accounts to my new Sales team.  All Low Priority Accounts will go to Astro.  All Medium Priority Accounts will go to Einstein.  And, any Accounts without a Priority will be marked as High and all High Priority Accounts get assigned to Codey.

Easy enough, so let’s take the below finished Flow and walk through how you’d do everything this Flow does in Excel and Workbench (or another Data Loader).

Part 1 – Creating the Report & Exporting to Excel  [Fast Lookup]

Alright, so let’s get a Report that includes the Customer Priority, Account Owner, and Account ID.

What this looks like in Flow is:

Note – AccountsToReassign is a Collection Variable

Alright, so now let’s export this data out so we can work with it in Excel!

Part 2 – Modifying the Data  [Loop]

Now that we’ve exported out our Data, it’s time to work with it and make our updates!  In Flow, our version of skipping to the next row is by using our Loop element.  In this scenario, it looks like this:

 

We’ve got a Medium Priority Account, that means we need to assign it to Einstein.

In Flow, this is what we just did:

We update the OwnerId of the Account to Einstein’s ID.

Then, we add this Account to the Collection/List of Records we are going to update at the end of the Flow.

Let’s go to our second record.  This also should get assigned to Einstein.  Notice, we’ve only touched the first two rows, everything else is untouched.  Also, notice that we’ve actually done NOTHING to Salesforce yet… it’s all prep work at this point.   This is important, so I’m going to say it again — Salesforce doesn’t yet know of the two Account Ownership changes, because we’ve not updated the records… we’re just getting them ready for to update.

Once again, in Flow, this is what we just did:

As we keep on Looping through these records, we eventually get to a Low Priority Account, and assign it to Astro.

In Flow, this is what we just did:

We update the OwnerId of the Account to Astro’s ID.

Then, we add this Account to the Collection/List of Records we are going to update at the end of the Flow.

As we keep updating each record, “looping” through them, we eventually get to the last record.  In this record, we’ve not got any Priority.  We need to update the Priority AND the Owner to Codey.

In Flow, this is what we just did:

Notice, our assignment is slightly different than the last two, because we’re updating the Customer Priority Field as well as the OwnerId here.

For the last time, we add this Account to the Collection/List of Records we are going to update at the end of the Flow.

Part 3 – Updating the Data  [Fast Lookup] 

Now, we’ve correctly updated our Excel spreadsheet.  We’re ready to commit these changes into Salesforce.  So, let’s navigate to our Data Loader tool of choice, and get ready to Update the data!

Map the Fields in the Excel file to the Salesforce Fields

Next, we take that deep breath in, and hit Confirm Update.

In Flow, all that looks like is this:

Note – AccountsToUpdate is a Collection Variable

Now that we’ve finished our update, we want to navigate back to our report and admire our craftsmanship:

Recap: If you’re an Admin that has done any sort of data manipulation in Excel and then updated Salesforce, you are equipped to master Fast Lookups, Loops, and Fast Updates/Creates.

Related Resources:

1. How to use a Fast Lookup
2. How to use a Loop
3. Counting in Loops
4. How to use a Fast Update

I often see many different posts around people not quite sure how to use a Loop in Salesforce.  Loops are often used to count a specific number of records.  This could be for a few different reasons:

• Watching your Limits
  • Remember, you can’t have more than 2,000 elements accessed in one transaction.  You could use a counter to ensure that you stop before you’d hit that limit.
• Creating n Records
  • If you want to create a specific number of records, like Tasks.  I’ve seen this request come across on the Success Community and other places many times.
• Custom Roll-up Summary in Flow
  • If you are’t able to use something like Andy’s DLRS or a standard Roll-up field, you can summarize an Amount or do a record count in Flow.

In this post, I’m going to go over the Watching your Limits scenario.  If you want to have more information around a Custom Roll-up Summary in Flow, it’s actually one of my first posts (here)!  I would also HIGHLY recommend watching Pete Fife’s Automation Hour presentation on Loops: http://automationhour.com/2017/02/pete-fife-deep-dive-into-loopsflow-21717/… he does a fantastic job covering the topic!

Let’s jump on into the details!

Most importantly, we’re going to need to create a variable to track our iterations inside our loop.  So, let’s create that variable.

 

Now, we’ve got our variable that we will be able to track the number of times we go through our Loop.  I’ve seen this inefficiently added it’s own Assignment inside a Loop.  I’ll urge you to add this into on of your existing Assignments inside a Loop, because it won’t do any harm there, and saves you an element each Loop.

Every time we loop through a record, and we’re doing our Ownership reassignment, we’re adding 1 to the value of our LoopCounter.  If we have 20 records, by the end of the transaction this LoopCounter variable would equal 20.  If we had 10, it would equal 10.

 

In Flow, you have a limited number of elements that you can run through in each transaction.  This means, you need to be extra careful when dealing with potentially higher data volumes.  Ideally, you really shouldn’t be hitting close to that 2,000 elements limitation… however, it doesn’t hurt to be paranoid and put in a decision to double-check.  So, that’s what we’re going to do.  The value you use will vary based on how complicated your Loop is.  You need to do some math to see the maximum number of records your Flow can take.  I like to always go below that to be extra safe.

Fun Fact: You don’t have to actually send someone back to the Loop for them to exit it.  You can exit mid-Loop through the records, once you hit a specific number that you want to Loop through.

And just like that, we were able to count and tell if we were about to hit a limit. While this was all concept, did you catch an area I should have included into this?  An alert to the Admin.  Throw in a Chatter Post or an Email to you for when you hit that limit, so you can review everything is still functioning as you’d expect.

 

For those of you that are still waiting to get struck by lightning, here’s another feature that you can marvel at until you make the move over (for those of you not using a console).  For me, this is going to be something I will look to start implementing in all of the Org’s I’m working in that are using Lightning.  I was excited about this feature, and already deployed it to my internal Org.  Previously, the Utility Bar only available in a console app, but now it is available for everyone regardless of if you’re in a console app or not.

Here’s a quick look at our Utility Bar in action:

Now, let’s talk about how this works, and why this can maximize productivity for you and End Users.  If you are in Lightning, you can go edit an existing App.  If you’re just getting started with Lightning, you’ll need to navigate to the App Manager and create a new Lightning App.  In the Lightning App wizard you’ll find the Utility Bar as the middle option.

What can we do?  Pretty much whatever we want!  There are 10 standard items already in there for us, but you can also develop your own custom Lightning Components that can be used in the Utility Bar.

Let’s say we want to add a Filter List (List View) onto our Bar… say our Opportunities Closing This Month.  Sure, that might be in the Recently Viewed List Views on the Opportunity Tab, but it isn’t guaranteed to be there.

Under the Utility Item Properties we’re able to customize the Icon, Width, & Height.  You’ll see that we can also have it load when you open the App.  This is is a feature you’ll typically want to run if your doing something like CTI.

Icon

Back when Lightning Experience just came out, you had to download the images from Lightning Design System.  Not anymore, you can now reference the Utility Icons on their site with just the Icon’s name (https://www.lightningdesignsystem.com/icons/#utility).  Be thoughtful in the Icon you select, make sure it makes sense for your Users.

Width & Height

This is one of those things you’ll want to adjust as you test and see the actual size of the component you’re using is on the screen.

Now that we set our size, let’s determine what Object, existing List View (filter), and how many records we want to return.

Simple as that, we’ve added our first Utility Bar Item!!  Let’s do another and put in some of our Key Links that people want to see.  All we need to do is select the Rich Text option and then paste in our Links for the End Users to access.

After you Save, your Utility Bar is ready for action!