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All About Flow: https://help.pm.leapevent.tech/a/1711583
Flow is a Salesforce tool for automation that can make your life as a PatronManager Certified Admin and your colleagues' lives easier.
When used correctly, automation in Salesforce can help you perform all sorts of actions behind the scenes, from sending email notifications to your development team when a large Donation comes in to updating fields on Contacts when it meets certain criteria to creating a Chatter post when a record meets certain requirements. The possibilities go on and on!
But with great power comes great responsibility. When used incorrectly or irresponsibly, Flow can and will break essential functions of PatronManager. For this reason, we always recommend testing Flows in a sandbox first, before bringing changes into your production account.
In this article, we'll go over:
- Testing the Flows that you build
- What Flow can do
- Some resources to learn more
- Some tips for troubleshooting Flow
- Documenting your customizations in PatronManager
Let's get started!
Flow falls under Salesforce Administration and are therefore outside the scope of PatronManager support services. If you have questions or need assistance, reach out in the Client Community or reference Salesforce's resources.
To help set you up for success, we’ve put guidelines together to help you avoid interfering with PatronManager functionality, corrupting your data, and to prevent negative impacts to your customizations due to PatronManager product upgrades.
Always test your Flows
Flows are a powerful tool that you can wield. Because of this, you'll need to exercise caution and test your Flows in a sandbox before deploying it into your production account. This power, and its related responsibilities, are in your hands.
Confused about sandboxes and production accounts?
A sandbox is just what it sounds like; it's a playground for you to test changes to your PatronManager account without actually affecting your real data. Your production account is where your real data lives, and is where you sell tickets and process donations.
If you're diving into Flow, use a sandbox to both learn the tool and test the Processes you build in the future. If you need to set up a sandbox, we've got instructions for you here.
What should I test with my Flows?
When you build a Flow in your sandbox to test it, we recommend running through these tasks in the sandbox to make sure everything is working properly:
- Sell a ticket via PatronManager Box Office
- Create and fulfill a subscription
- Buy a ticket online via the Public Ticketing Site (PTS)
- Qualify the ticket order you just created, creating a new Contact
- Buy and qualify another ticket order, but qualify to an existing Contact
- Create a donation record
- Create an online donation record using a Donation Form
- Qualify the donation record you just created, creating a new Contact
- Create and qualify another donation, but qualify to an existing Contact
- Sign up for your mailing list online using a Signup Form (if you use PatronManager Signup Forms)
- Qualify the Contact you just created by signing up for the mailing list
- Create a new Contact with a new Account
We've got more on testing customizations in a sandbox for you here.
Untested Flows can break PatronManager's ability to sell tickets and take donations.
- Test each new Flow in a sandbox before bringing it into your production account
- Test all your Flows in that sandbox after each new PatronManager release
- Once you move your Flow over to production, test it there, as well
How do I test transactions in my sandbox?
Great question! We've got a whole article on this for you.
If you follow those steps to test transactions, you won't even have to refund the transactiosn when you're done!
How do I test transactions in my production account?
What card you use for test transactions is up to you; if you're comfortable with using your own, do so. If not, you can ask the top brass at your organization to get a credit card for you to use for testing.
Either way, you'll refund the transactions immediately after making sure everything is working correctly.
Pro-Tip: For testing, we recommend creating some specific Price Levels with relatively small dollar amounts.
What can Flow do?
Flow is a versatile tool, which allows you to set up automation to update fields or create records automatically, or to even guide users through a process! Here are some examples:
| Scenario | Example |
|---|---|
| Create a task when a record fits X criteria | Your Development Director wants a task notifying them to call a donor if they made a new donation over $500 |
| Send an email when a record fits X criteria | Your Board Chair (who isn't a PatronManager user) wants to receive an email if a major donor's Contact is marked as Deceased |
| Update a field on a record when a different field on that same record fits X criteria | When a Contact has a Board Member Status of "Current," the VIP checkbox should automatically be checked |
| Update a field on a record when something changes on a related record | Update the Phone field on a Contact when the Phone field changes on the Account level |
| Update a field on a record when a related record is created | Set the custom field Prospect Status on an Account to "Soliciting" if a Major Gift record is created related to that Account |
| Create a new record when an existing record fits X criteria | If the custom field Prospective Major Donor? on a Contact is checked, create a Major Gift Donation record related to that Contact |
| Create a Chatter post on a record when the record fits X criteria | Post in Chatter when a Contact marked as a VIP buys a ticket to an upcoming show |
| Guide users through a process when certain criteria is met | Guide users through entering a Major Gift and ensuring all necessary fields are entered |
How to become a Flow Pro
Want to learn more about flow? Here are some resources to help you become reach flow wizardry heights!
- Salesforce has this great Trailhead on building Flows (and, bonus, you'll get to build some test flows)
- In Salesforce's Trailhead, you can complete the Build a Simple Flow Project to practice with a flow
- Salesforce Trailhead also offers a Flow Fundamentals Superbadge Unit you can complete
- Here's Salesforce's documentation on Flow Builder
When working with Trailhead, make sure to complete Trailhead challenges in a Playground Org (created from Trailhead).
Challenges should not be completed in your PatronManager account.
Troubleshooting Flow
Flow is a powerful tool from Salesforce, but it can also be a little tricky! While you're free to use Flow, our Client Support team will not be able to help you fix a broken Flow.
If you run into error messages while working in your Sandbox, or if you're finding that your Flow isn't firing, look through the Flow again. Remember that you'll need to tell Flows exactly what you want to do, and exactly when you want to do it - leaving any gaps, or assuming the system will know what you mean will likely result in a broken Flow. We can't list out every possible error, but we recommend:
- Think about your Flow systematically - what are you trying to do? How do you translate that into specific actions and triggers?
- Cut your Flow into the smaller, specific pieces that make up the larger whole.
- Slowly add those pieces back in to your Flow to find out which aspect is causing an issue.
- Can you make the action happen if you change the trigger?
- Can you make the trigger work if you change the action?
- Can you perform a similar set of triggers and actions on a different object?
Still running into trouble? We recommend checking out Salesforce's documentation on troubleshooting Flows. If you're not finding what you're looking for there, the Salesforce Success Community is always abuzz with Flow discussion. You can also reach out to other PatronManager users in the PatronManager Client Community in the Salesforce Admin topic.
Document your Flows
Documenting customizations is essential; an institutional memory surrounding PatronManager will save everyone loads of time and energy, especially when dealing with automation!
Keeping track of your changes will help current and future staff understand how to use your Flows, and how to further customize PatronManager from an educated perspective.
We highly recommend following the guidelines in this article, called (you guessed it) How (and Why) to Document Your Customizations in PatronManager, so you can keep track of the changes you make, why you made them, and what they do in PatronManager.