Full disclosure: I scrapped the first flow. And then I started building a Visualforce page, but then I said “no. Flow. I said I would do it.”

So I scrapped the Visualforce page.

Skip ahead about an hour later, and I was still staring at the Flow Designer with a decision box and two screens with no information.

<internal monologue>

What is happening? I cannot decide how to make this work. I have to get back to step 0, and I’ve done that so many times. This is frustrating. But something…anything is better than nothing, right? So I am trudging ahead.

</internal monologue>

First thing I learned: if you do a lookup for a record, you’re going to need to make sure you map every field you’re going to use. That seemed extremely obvious for something like a record update, but I was surprised by the lookup. I don’t know why that seemed surprising, now that I think about it.

In my first iterations of this particular Flow, I wanted to give my users a choice in where to start. I gave them an input screen where they could choose among an Account, an Opportunity, and a Freight Matrix. I created a complex flow with a 3-branch decision tree that could then loop back to the original and etc. But that would not have solved the problem I was trying to solve – they might not go back and finish.

I reworked it, and I ended up with something like this:

Look at that! One simple flow with a series of screens and updates. All good. I ran a test, and I had missed one field in my final lookup screen. No worries! I added it to the fields to map. I clicked save.

And then this happened.

Well, this is awkward, amiright?

Tune in next time for Flow 3: The Polymath’s New Guide to Failure! (And in the meantime, feel free to see the original Guide to Failure.)

Correction: I’m writing a blog post to put off creating a flow.

A week or so ago, one of the sales reps sent a member of our marketing team a list of questions that she asks during scoping calls with clients. She wanted a fancier version of it, maybe? I’m not sure, but the marketing coworker came to me and asked about it, and I said “well, we can use Salesforce, and then the info is populated directly.”

I reviewed the list, and naturally a good chunk of those questions were already represented in Salesforce as fields. Fields that aren’t always filled out (thank you, Field Trip for confirming my suspicions).

I told her I would take it from here, and I reached out to our sales rep – “hey, do you want to pilot an interactive version of this form online?”

To my shock and delight, the sales rep said yes.

Cue my sudden realization that I didn’t really know how to make it work. Yes, these fields exist in Salesforce, but they are kind of all over the place. They are on the Account object, the Opportunity object, a custom object, and anywhere else you can think.

My first thought was Visualforce, since I’ve been trying to prepare for Platform Developer 1. It helps that the sales guys always tell me “we don’t really have a consistent way of doing this.”

The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that maybe the root cause is that we don’t really have a consistent way of doing anything. Everyone is given their tool (Salesforce), and then they run off to survive in the wilderness. But they all use it differently. Some use it like a storage canister, where they try to keep food or water preserved for all time. Others use it as a compass – where should be heading? Still others just like to look at it for long stretches of time without really doing anything.

They largely consider this to be a strength, but I have my doubts.

So I’m working on a compromise: a visual flow that will allow them to jump between input screens but keep them generally on one path.

This is new territory for me, so as I learn, I intend to post about it. I like to share my mistakes – it keeps me humble, and hopefully someone else can learn from them.

My last series, Sales Cloud for Marketing, is coming to a close, anyway…perfect timing!

Look out for the first post in the series: Cramming Session for Visual Workflow.