Mastering Salesforce Flows - Expert Guidance From a Salesforce Strategist

Unlock the secrets of Salesforce flows that could skyrocket your career and push your organization to new heights! Join me, Josh Matthews, and the formidable Christina Nava for a journey into the heart of Salesforce strategy. Christina's rise from user to Director of Salesforce Strategy at Gaggle is nothing short of inspiring, and she's here to share her story, passion for service cloud, and how a pandemic pivot reshaped her career trajectory. We're demystifying Salesforce flows, painting a picture of 'programming with pictures' that invites even the most code-averse individuals to embrace this powerful tool.

Are you ready to tackle Salesforce flows but feel like you're at square one? Fear not—Christina and I have got you covered. We explore how people from various backgrounds can approach learning this essential skill, acknowledging the challenges and time commitment required to master it. We arm you with resources including Trailhead, Automation Champion, and Jennifer Lee's YouTube channel to help you navigate the complexities. Plus, we candidly discuss the limitations of relying solely on AI tools for learning, emphasizing the importance of staying current with Salesforce's ever-evolving platform.

In our final chapter, we hone in on communicating your newfound Salesforce flow expertise. Whether you're crafting a resume or sitting down for that crucial interview, understanding how to convey the intricacies of flow types—especially the beginner-friendly screen flows—is vital. We provide insights on spotlighting your skills through specific examples and measurable results, and stress the significance of context and direct, hands-on experience. Get ready to elevate your Salesforce game and make a memorable impact on your career journey with this episode's invaluable advice.

Resources:
Christina’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinanava/

If you want to learn flow development, here are the resources:

Jennifer Lee's YouTube channels

App Builder

Automation Champion

For the video, check out Joshforce on YouTube

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

And now the number one audio program that helps you to hire, get hired and soar higher in the Salesforce ecosystem. It's the Salesforce Career Show with Josh Matthews and Vanessa Grant.

Josh Matthews: 0:29

Hey, what's up everybody. It's Josh Matthews from Josh Force and the Salesforce Career Show. Today, I'm joined by my friend, christina Nava. Christina is an exceptional Salesforce strategist. She has worn many, many hats. She's going to tell you all about herself in just a moment, and stay tuned because we're going to be talking about Salesforce flows, how they can enhance your career and help your organization, and how to get more experience and more involvement with it, plus how you can articulate that experience if you're in a situation where you're trying to either get a raise or get a new job and really express what your competency is with flows. Welcome, christina. Thank you, I'm really happy to be here.

Josh Matthews: 1:06

Terrific. Now I'll just tell the listeners and our viewers here momentarily that this is actually if you're listening on the podcast. There is a video for this. You can find it at Josh Forrest. One word on YouTube. And if you're a YouTube watcher but you like podcasts also, you can always find us at the Salesforce Career Show, where me and my co-host, vanessa Grant, record podcasts about two a month. We've got maybe 40 episodes. Go ahead and check that out. It's on your favorite platform, whether it's Spotify, apple, google, you name it you'll easily be able to find it. So, christina, let's start with some basics. What do you do?

Christina Nava: 1:46

I am the director of Salesforce strategy at a company called Gaggle, and so here we have two different Salesforce orgs. I have two people reporting to me, and so I do everything from standard admin stuff to all of our automations, our designing and just making sure that we are using Salesforce in the way that we need to so that our company can grow.

Josh Matthews: 2:09

And how long have you been involved in the ecosystem?

Christina Nava: 2:13

So I was using Salesforce as an end user starting from about 2011. Then, in 2014, I became an also admin, or an accidental admin.

Josh Matthews: 2:24

Accidental, admin. Sure, yeah, yeah.

Christina Nava: 2:26

And I wore that hat for quite a few years at a couple of different companies. And then, in 2019, I made the leap to make Salesforce my full-time career, and I've been doing that ever since. So a little over five years now, just pure Salesforce.

Josh Matthews: 2:40

And so what were you doing in addition to the accidental administration?

Christina Nava: 2:50

So I was five years for the first five years the director of tech support for a couple of different companies. So I was leading the support departments for small SAS companies and then, because we weren't big enough to have a full-time admin, I was doing that on the side.

Josh Matthews: 2:59

Okay, and so have you predominantly been working in sales and service cloud or other clouds as well?

Christina Nava: 3:04

In the beginning it was predominantly sales and service. Cloud Service is kind of still where my heart is because it's what I've done for so long.

Josh Matthews: 3:12

Go figure, right, exactly Shocking.

Christina Nava: 3:15

But now we use a lot of different clouds here at Gaggle.

Josh Matthews: 3:19

Good, good deal. Talk about how you actually got to Gaggle. What was that like? You've been there for what? About a year and a half now, three years, three years. Someone's got to go back to math class, yeah, so how did you get that job? I mean, you're the director of Salesforce strategy. I'm kind of curious, and I think the audience would be curious a little bit, about what does a director of strategy do?

Christina Nava: 3:46

So the way I got this job is I was working for a Salesforce partner at a small boutique firm as a consultant and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the firm, I enjoyed what I was doing but, as you know, being a consultant can be a little stressful. And then COVID hit and I legit thought we were all going to die in the next six months.

Josh Matthews: 4:04

Oh gosh.

Christina Nava: 4:09

So you have kind of the stress you get from work and the stress from all this personal stuff going on. And then the president and CEO of Gaggle just reached out to me on LinkedIn and said, hey, do you know anyone who's interested in being our senior Salesforce admin? And I'm like, can you tell me more information? And so I looked him up on LinkedIn. I looked up the company and it really spoke to me because it sounds so corny it really does, but the mission. It really did speak to me because we help save the lives of children, we do security monitoring software for schools. So it's like I'm interested and so, even though I hadn't been looking for another job, it just kind of fell into my lap. And so I applied and they accepted me and I started out as their senior Salesforce admin they're only one, but the senior and then last October got promoted to director.

Josh Matthews: 4:58

Okay, well, congratulations on that. Now, if there's one thing I know about you, in addition to the fact that you're absolutely awesome, it is that you love flows, and that's what we're going to be talking about a little bit today. We tend not to get too technical on this channel or on the podcast, right? We don't? There's other channels for that, so this isn't going to be overly technical. But if you could, for our audience that might be a little bit less familiar with what a Salesforce flow is can you share with them what it is? And then we'll kind of deep dive a little bit more after that.

Christina Nava: 5:33

So flows are programming with pictures. So when most people think of programming they think of code. They think of like actual typing on their keyboard. They you know all the letters and the semicolons and making sure you have all that correctly, all the syntax of programming, and that can be very daunting for a lot of people. I mean you can go to school and get a whole you know degree in this. It can be very complicated. Flows break down programming so it is a lot more accessible to people who don't have that background in it.

Christina Nava: 6:08

So like me like you, like any admin, can go in and write an actual program. I think people forget that flows are programs and it allows anyone to go in and just get their hands dirty and just do it.

Josh Matthews: 6:22

Now, flows can vary in size and complexity. We spoke last week and you were sharing a couple of different flows that you did. That required, I think, 40 hours of putting this together, but maybe before we talk a little bit more about that share what a small, simple flow might be like. What's the what's the fastest flow you ever developed? How much time does it necessarily take to do the most simple flow of all?

Christina Nava: 6:48

So probably one of the fastest is it's what's called a before save flow. So when you create a flow, you can say, before the record is even written to the database, I want this to happen. It's called a before save flow. It's the simplest one you can write, and what this one does is when you add a product to an opportunity, it automatically updates the quantity to a specific field that's already on the opportunity. So say, you've already put on the opportunity that it's going to be 100. So every single product you add is automatically updated to 100. So it is literally one element, just one element in the flow. That's all it is.

Josh Matthews: 7:29

That's it, simple, simple and when you like. The idea behind flows is to effectively save people money, save people time, be more efficient. Right, and you know, think about maybe the most highly impactful flow that you've ever done. Right? If you were to figure out how many hours you know man hours that were saved over the course of, say, a year by doing that flow, what kind of numbers would you come up with?

Christina Nava: 7:57

So I would. I have two that I usually go down, go back to all the time for complexity and receiving time. One of them is so one of our orgs is a health cloud org and we have students as clients and we match them with providers who help give them therapy and coaching. And so our clients have specific things that they need. So either the things that they need help with, or when they can meet, or you know they prefer male or female provider. Then we have providers who have their set of criteria and then we have to match them up.

Christina Nava: 8:34

We were doing this manually to begin with and it was on one screen. You pull up your client. On the other screen you have all of your providers and you're having to match up, you know, up to 10 different pieces of information. It was taking a long time. So I wrote a flow that would pull up the client, find all the potential matches and you just click on the provider. Everything is done. So at our current level of clients we had at the time this was last year I was saving five to 10 hours a week. So as we grow that number would change even more. So just that one flow.

Josh Matthews: 9:18

Yeah.

Christina Nava: 9:18

It's got to do my math. How many days? 200 days a year, it's a lot of hours.

Josh Matthews: 9:24

Well, yeah, it's, it's. It's 250 to 500 hours a year. If everyone takes a couple of weeks of vacation, right, and if it escalates from there let's say it escalates from seven and a half to 10, you're looking at 500 hours. That's one person working full-time for three months. So that is an exceptional cost savings. But, more importantly, people don't like drudgery, do they?

Christina Nava: 9:48

No, they don't. No, it just makes that all easier and better.

Josh Matthews: 9:52

Yeah, and if there's one group of people that don't like drudgery more than anyone else, it's Americans, and you can tell by counting how many factories we have right. So this stuff is really important. How important is it for someone who is fairly new to the ecosystem? Let's say they've been an admin. They've been even if it's an accidental admin for a year, but they haven't really got their hands on flows yet. I think when we spoke before you talked, there can be the people who like doing the flows, and you talked a little bit about your team. Maybe you can share with our audience about that, cause I know you're passionate, but not everybody likes this stuff.

Christina Nava: 10:28

Right. I think if you're a solo admin, you are going to be the best admin you can be If you know flows. You don't necessarily have to be good at them, but you have to know them because, in my opinion, part of our job as an admin is to make everybody else's job easier.

Josh Matthews: 10:50

Right.

Christina Nava: 10:51

And you're not going to be able to do that unless you can rent flows Right. Unless I can take those 20 steps that they do every single time they close an opportunity and make that into one button, I'm not doing my job to the best of my ability. So, as a solo admin, I think it's very important If you're on a team of even two, two, three, four, whatever. I think it becomes a little less important as long as at least one other person on the team is. So I think you have to know what a flow does, what a flow can do at a minimum, because as you're sitting and you're working on your job, it always needs to be in the back of your mind. How can I automate this? How can I make it easier?

Josh Matthews: 11:40

I love that yeah.

Christina Nava: 11:42

You may not be the best person on your team to do it, but you need to know that what is possible. And then on a team. If you've ever been on a team, you end up having people who gravitate towards what they're best at and what they enjoy doing. So if you're on again, if you're on a team and that's not your cup of tea, I think that's fine.

Josh Matthews: 12:06

Right, right, look, I have not received an administrative Salesforce admin job order in the last 12 months that didn't state that knowledge and experience of building flows wasn't in there. It's in everything that I see. I don't know anyone who's. It's sort of like AI. Now, right, it's like you don't have to be a pro, you don't have to be an expert, you don't have to write code, but you should be able to prompt effectively.

Josh Matthews: 12:36

If you're acquiring a new position now in 24, everyone else is learning it, and if you're not doing it, you probably should. What do you think it will take from a time standpoint? So if someone's going to say, okay, I want to get good at flows, right, I'm going to dedicate X number of hours over the next two months or three months to develop a level of competency that most employers will be. You know, maybe it's not super expert, maybe I haven't done one or two or three flows that took me 40 whole hours of if this, then that and dealing with stakeholders and the whole thing, but for me to just have feel like I've got some good mid range competency, how many hours, how many flows? What kind of experience should someone be investing in, either on the job, if they have access or off the job, you know, in a sandbox to get good at this stuff.

Christina Nava: 13:30

So I mean I have to, you know, put a caveat in there. It's going to depend upon the person. If you have any kind of programming background, you're going to take to it like a duck to water.

Josh Matthews: 13:44

They're probably doing it already. If they already have a program, you're going to take to it like a duck to water. They're probably doing it already. If they already have a program, they're probably not watching this, yeah.

Christina Nava: 13:49

That's a good point, okay, so let's assume someone who doesn't have a programming background. Then you're going to have people that fall into two camps and you're going to have people who logic comes very easily to them. If this, then that when you logic comes very easily to them. If this, then that when you have those people, flows and programming makes a lot more sense, it kind of speaking their language, then you're going to have people that really have to learn that from the ground up. And the easy way to know if this is you is how do you feel about formulas? If you took to formulas very easily and if you're any kind of admin, you know you need to know formulas. So you took to formulas very easily and if you're any kind of admin, you know you need to know formulas. So when you're writing a formula, if you're really beating your head against it, know it's going to take a little more time for you to be able to get comfortable with flows, because it's just some kind of brain same kind of logic.

Josh Matthews: 14:40

That's true, you know, like definitely so many variety, so much variety of thinking styles exist on this earth and in this ecosystem, and it is. There are certain things that are very difficult for certain people to do, like I'm an extrovert and I like talking to people, and introverts, they might like to talk to people but have this much energy for it, whereas I might have a larger capacity. Right, it's the same thing. I think this know thyself, this idea of know thyself, is really important because then you can, you have to understand like to be successful. We're going to have to learn to do things that we don't necessarily like to do.

Josh Matthews: 15:20

I don't know anyone in my, in my world, who's massively successful, that got that way by doing everything that was easy and never had to learn anything and never had to spend a lot of time, not just a little bit, but a lot of time doing things they don't like to do, like the dishes or laundry or things like that. But for me, I can't code, I'm terrible with learning languages or symbolic languages. I've got, I play three, four instruments. I don't read music, you know, I do chord charts, so I'm good at improvising and logic in that way, and I think music relates to code in a lot of ways.

Josh Matthews: 15:59

I know so many musicians who are developers and coders. So, yeah, understanding that about yourself and then figuring out like, look, maybe this isn't going to be your main thing, but maybe, just maybe, you should push yourself and dedicate some time. So let's take that person who has the capacity to learn Um, but it's not a natural thing, right, it's. It's not innate, you know, can. Can they spend 20 hours on this and feel like, oh, I think I got this, or is it going to take a couple hundred hours or more?

Christina Nava: 16:33

definitely not the 20. Don't know for a couple hundred. I think a good rule of thumb is the amount of time you would need to study and be able to pass a platform app builder, because the platform app builder certification focuses a lot on that automation, that way of thinking. What would you do when? So, and I think the trailhead for that it's been a while. Since I've looked at it it's definitely over a hundred hours. So I would have to guess somewhere between one to 200, but don't let that discourage you. Yeah, the number one thing you need to know is Google, right, cause there's a couple of really good websites and and YouTube channels. I've done a couple of them myself. They take an issue, they take a problem and they walk you through exactly how to build the solution. So the way I first started is I found a couple of those. I got something that was maybe 90% of what I needed, copied it word for word, element for element, and then made my little changes. Yeah, and it worked. Yeah, you know.

Josh Matthews: 17:44

You're doing a mini remodel on a flow versus having to build it from scratch, which makes an awful lot of sense. Okay, yeah, and where should people go specifically to learn this? So you talked about the trailhead for Platform App Builder. Absolutely when else.

Christina Nava: 18:03

Automation Champion is a really good website. I can't remember his name for the life of me right now. I normally know it. He's great. He's great. Jennifer Lee, Salesforce. Jennifer Lee, she has two different YouTube channels Automate this and how I Sold it. Those are both amazing. They all have blog posts that go with it. So if you are like me, I can watch a video all I want. It's going to go in one ear and out the other.

Josh Matthews: 18:29

We'll drop some links. We'll drop some links below in this video. Yeah, good.

Christina Nava: 18:34

Got some really good ones that I always track for people. Terrific, you can get there, trust me, you can get there. Anybody can get there.

Josh Matthews: 18:47

Of course. What about? What about chat, gpt or some of these other generative AIs? Have you ever messed around in the last few months? I mean they've. They've become so much more robust from a year ago. I'm curious if you've ever leaned into AI, generative AI, to figure out some of the flow stuff.

Christina Nava: 19:02

Not for the flow stuff and for a very specific reason, because one, I only use the free versions. You know I'm not going to go pay for it right now, and with ChatGPT the free version is. I think 2021 is the last time it crawled to get its data and flows changed in winter 19. So basically the February 2019, they went from the old way, where you had to have a splash it's been so long To the new, easier, more colorful way of doing things.

Josh Matthews: 19:37

Sure.

Christina Nava: 19:38

And since then Salesforce has put a lot of time and effort into flows, as you all may or may not know, the old way of doing automations without Apex. So workflows and process builder, that is going away. That is actually 100% going away. I think in December of 25 now.

Josh Matthews: 19:58

I saw a job ad the other day that requested process build and I thought really Come on really Like what are you doing Exactly yeah?

Christina Nava: 20:09

So since February 2019, there have been so many changes to flows, like every release, two, three massive changes. So if you're trying to look at something that is now three years old, it's going to give you bad data.

Josh Matthews: 20:25

Well, with that in mind, then, any big updates for spring, spring 24? Dang it.

Christina Nava: 20:34

You didn't read the hundred pages of documentation. I did, but I already forgot.

Josh Matthews: 20:39

And, by the way, folks, if you really want to get to the heart of some of this stuff, you can grab a lot of this documentation. You could drop it into an AI platform and just say summarize this for me, right? So not a bad way to go.

Christina Nava: 20:50

Yeah, yeah. And I will say the one thing I use chat TPT for is because I am a technical person and I'm slightly introverted. I hate the way I write. I hate my writing style. I think it's very clunky. So there've been many times where I'm like I'll write up a paragraph and I'll put it in chat, chat, TPTC. Can you please rewrite this in a professional but friendly manner?

Josh Matthews: 21:09

Yeah, Nothing wrong. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, I think a lot of people are going to become much better writers by using the AI, right? If you use it enough, you start to learn what it's doing, how it's changing.

Christina Nava: 21:25

You also start realizing, when you read Amazon reviews, how many of them are written up by chat and TPT.

Josh Matthews: 21:31

Yeah yeah. I was literally I'm not joking 30 minutes ago having a conversation about that with a buddy of mine.

Christina Nava: 21:37

Really.

Josh Matthews: 21:38

Yeah, yeah, who's involved in Amazon stuff. So, yeah, very interesting. So let's talk a little bit, if we can, about I'd like to hear first about some of these monster flows that you've done right, and then we'll talk a little bit more about how people can articulate their background and experience in an interview or in conversations with their employer to demonstrate and ideally, hopefully, leverage some of their accomplishments for pay raise, for promotions or for a new opportunity, right?

Christina Nava: 22:10

Absolutely.

Josh Matthews: 22:12

Okay, so 40 hours on a single flow. I know it's not all just sitting there and dragging and dropping, but tell us a little bit about that.

Christina Nava: 22:21

Okay, so in health cloud, I already mentioned the one flow which does the provider and client matching. I have another, really big one in there which is posted on our portal and it allows potential clients to sign up for services. So what this does is it determines are they a student, Are they a legal guardian of a student or are they a counselor, a district staff member. Based upon which one of those, it goes down different paths, asks different questions, it gathers all the necessary required information and it creates them as a lead. Then, based upon a series of criteria, it determines all right, they need to stay as a lead because we need to either go get clarifying information or maybe it's a school district that needs to verify all students. But if it is, they have everything correct. It's the correct school district. We just immediately convert them into a person account, turn them into a portal user and send them their login to the experience cloud like terry potter with a wand.

Josh Matthews: 23:32

You're just like bam boom, done, yeah, done. I love it.

Christina Nava: 23:37

That one. I still full honesty. I don't enjoy going and modifying that flow because it's so complicated.

Josh Matthews: 23:46

Sure.

Christina Nava: 23:47

And I wrote it.

Josh Matthews: 23:48

Yeah, yeah, I mean so talk about the, because we talked a little bit about the prior flow, which saved five, 10 hours a week, right, but then there's going to be flows that don't just save time. It's like you can't do it if not for the flow, like it's a nothing burger without the flow. Is this a nothing burger without the flow that you wrote?

Christina Nava: 24:13

Yeah, I mean because otherwise we would have to be getting papers from the students with all of this information filled in and someone typing it in manually and then manually making these decisions. It's really a no-go. This is one of those things where the ROI would just be like we're not even going to talk about this. Yeah.

Josh Matthews: 24:35

Yeah, what's the hardest thing about the logic? So you build a flow. I think it's going to work. You test it Breaks. How difficult is that to get in there? Because you were just saying I don't like going in there and modifying this stuff. How difficult is it to QA these things? Are you sort of taking an agile approach? Can you take an agile approach to the QA on this?

Christina Nava: 25:00

Absolutely Okay. So when I tell people, when they're first starting out on flows, this is how you do it, yeah. If you're not going to copy it from someone, which again do it if you can do it, yeah. But if you're going to start from scratch, write it down first. Write down how you would tell someone to go do it in the ui, you know I like that search for your um account.

Christina Nava: 25:27

Open your account. Edit your account. Edit this field. Save your account. Literally what you if, if someone had started tomorrow and they know nothing about your business, know nothing about salesforce. Step by step, exactly what you if someone had started tomorrow and they know nothing about your business, know nothing about Salesforce. Step-by-step, exactly what you would tell them to do.

Josh Matthews: 25:44

So basically everybody, just pretend that you're trying to tell me and you'll be fine Do you want me to talk slower.

Christina Nava: 25:56

So then you take your first step and so in the example I just gave, which is open, your find sorry, it's find your account. How do you do that? You're going to do a get element on the account object. So that's your first step make, debug it, make sure it works, make sure you actually found a record. If you didn't, why? Because if you wait until you're 20 steps down and you do your debug, you're going to lose a lot of time. One, it may be hard to find out where the problem is and two, you may get really discouraged. Once you get that first element working, you're like, yes, okay, I got this and it's going to give you that little shot of dopamine to allow you to keep going when you do run into that issue.

Josh Matthews: 26:45

Yeah, and it's definitely a personality thing, like I've been working with developers for the last 25 years 25, 26 years and I've placed some people back in the day, some Java developers. I remember this one guy I placed I'd known him for years and I placed him with a well, they eventually got bought by Fidelity was looking at code for smaller community banks and he had to spend a solid six months just looking at this nightmare of spaghetti code. He couldn't even do anything with it. He just spent six months reading and making notes on all of the potential things. This is not even testing it, but his name was Steve. He was an interesting guy, definitely, I want to say he definitely had a little bit of Asperger's going on and I almost think that it took that to have someone with that much focus and dedication as something like that.

Josh Matthews: 27:47

We're not all wired that way right Particularly. You know nowadays, when we've got these little computers in our pocket and video games and you know quick hits on social media and getting likes and all this stuff, people want that quick, that really fast. Dopamine hit right, that anticipation reward, and if you're not getting it, it's difficult, and we see this throughout all sorts of things. It's not just flows, it's not just coding and things like that. It could be playing. I'm pointing to my drum kit. It could be like you want to learn a complex song, you've got to break it down and you have to play it painfully slow. It's not going to sound like the song to get that coordination right, so you got to do it painfully slow, yeah, until you build that up more and more and more. So you know, for the folks out there that are going to watch, that are watching this, that are going to break into flows, if you haven't yet or maybe you've kind of already got your feet wet a little bit, you want to get better. You know, just give yourself a break, give yourself a little pat on the back. Take it one step at a time. You'll wake up in three months and be shocked at what you know.

Josh Matthews: 28:56

And I think it's really important for the folks who want to get good at this, that don't yet have that skill set. If you shared one to 200 hours, okay, 1,500 hours, that doesn't mean you have to spend 15 hours a week for the next 10 weeks. You do five hours a week. But I do recommend do a little bit every day, don't just save it all. I'm going to do eight hours every Saturday for the next month because you'll forget so much in the interim, just like anyone who's learning a new language or learning a musical instrument.

Josh Matthews: 29:28

Even doing 20 minutes or half an hour a day every single day of the year is going to be way better than doing two and a half hours or three hours or three and a half hours one day a week. I mean you might need a little bit more time than 20 minutes just to get in and adapt, but put it on your calendar plan for it. But put it on your calendar plan for it. Find a support network. Go to Ohana, slack, some of the other links that we'll have below, and get that community. Do it with a friend too, right, yeah? So let's kind of switch gears a little bit. This has been fun, but I want to talk about how someone who does flows, how should they be articulating this, both on a resume and in interviews? There's more than one kind of flow. What are the three? I think it's three primary types of flows. What are they?

Christina Nava: 30:21

Three main ones. So you have your scheduled triggered flow, record triggered flow, scheduled Triggered Flow, record Triggered Flow and Screen Flow. So a Screen Flow is typically used when you're going to click a button on your page, or it can be embedded in your page layout, and it's when you want to either get information from your user or display information back. So a good example would be, instead of using the default new opportunity button, I'm going to create my own, because I really only need three pieces of information and it's just. I'm making their lives easier.

Christina Nava: 30:58

You know simple one right there. So that's your screen flow. A record triggered flow is triggered, aka starts when something happens on a record. So whenever your record is created, updated or deleted, so you're going to automatically run things in the background. So the first one I talked about, that very simple one which changes the quantity on my opportunity product, that is a record triggered flow that fires when a record is created and before it's seen. So that is record triggered flow. Sure, a scheduled triggered flow happens at a scheduled day and time.

Josh Matthews: 31:41

So I can say I'm running batch actions yeah.

Christina Nava: 31:44

Yeah, Every day at 8 am, I want to go through all of my contacts that are active and I want to I don't know do X, Y, Z. I used to have one that I would demo. It would send a happy birthday email for people. Okay, nice.

Josh Matthews: 31:57

Is there an E? Which of the three is easiest for someone who's brand new to get acquainted with?

Christina Nava: 32:04

A schedule triggered flow. Sorry, a screen flow, because it's easier to debug.

Josh Matthews: 32:10

Okay.

Christina Nava: 32:11

Because you can pop up a little message that says my variable is currently this right now, you know so you can kind of step through it a lot easier.

Josh Matthews: 32:19

Okay.

Christina Nava: 32:20

All right, good deal.

Josh Matthews: 32:22

So now we've got these. These are the three primary types of flows. Primary types of flows how is? How? Should someone express their competency and experience with flows on their resume or on their LinkedIn profile?

Christina Nava: 32:37

So, obviously, if you've been doing this for a while and you can point to specific examples, like you know I can I created a flow that saved hundreds of hours. X, y, z. As you know, we kind of all know that on your LinkedIn profile and on your resume, you want to put specific numbers where you can. Now, if you are just starting out in the ecosystem and you can't say that in an actual work environment. This is what I did. Obviously, if you have your platform app builder certification, that's going to help. Obviously, if you have your platform app builder certification, that's going to help. That's going to say what you did. But you're going to want to use those keywords. Um, experienced with flows. You know, have built flows. I'm not good with words. This is where I need to check TPT.

Josh Matthews: 33:22

You're good. Look, I let me jump in here a little bit. I'll just share you know what, what you're talking about, christina. You just said like hey, everybody knows that you should have numbers, and so I've got some mockingbird out there making a lot of noise. But you want to give context to whatever that little accomplishment or bullet point is. And then you want to give a result.

Josh Matthews: 33:44

Right, so great, you built a flow, okay, but what did it do? Like, did it save time? Did it save money? Did it make someone's day better? Did it save you time? Did it save the employees time? Who is the beneficiary overall? What's the number? What's the amount of benefit? And we talked about two different examples. One saved five to 10 hours a week, probably even more than that, every single week of the year. The other one, you know, offered a solution, right that that never like to help kids, to help kids who need some counseling, and you never could have even done it without the flow, right? So that's, that's a. That's a little bit more significant, I think, than just 10 hours. It's a, it's a yes, no versus like this much, right, but have the result in the resume and be prepared to talk about it like how you did it? Why you did it?

Christina Nava: 34:41

who asked you to do it.

Josh Matthews: 34:42

Just know that stuff inherently, yeah, don't be like me and go uh Great, look, you're the guest, you're the one who's the expert on all this stuff, so you're doing fantastic. You know what about an interviews? I think you'd shared with me before that you don't really care if someone has flows, if you're hiring them for your team, because that means you get to do more of them. You selfish, selfish strategist. How dare you? I know, right. So but let's oh, so go ahead.

Christina Nava: 35:09

I was going to say. And my second ulterior motive is then, when I train them, they write them how I like them.

Josh Matthews: 35:15

There you go, there you go. So you've trained people on how to do this. And and then that still rings true, that a hundred to 200 hours, right, how much hands on training, like how much actual, let's say, through the course of 200 hours, how much hands-on, one-on-one direction are they necessarily receiving from you?

Christina Nava: 35:36

A whole lot in the beginning. So in the very, the two people who have working for me, I hired them both as interns with. They both have certifications but no knowledge in the ecosystem, you know, no real world experience and no experience with flows at all. So the first thing I do is, for a while, I have them watch me and I just watch it and I explain what I'm doing and I kind of wait until I get a gauge. Basically, the questions they're asking tells me that they're starting to get it, tells me that they're starting to get it. So then my next step is a request will come in to modify an existing flow and it's a very simple change. It may be, you know, when an opportunity is created, instead of putting it into new, put it into in progress. So very, very simple change. I'll have them go do it Like let me look at it before you activate it. Yeah, you know, then a little more complicated, a little more complicated.

Christina Nava: 36:31

In my monthly meetings with them I always ask them the same question. So the gist of this is I always want you to be getting better, but not stressed out. So I constantly want to give you more and more complicated tasks, but I want you at the same level of growth, so I want them stretched, but not stressed, and so that's why I give them a little more complicated flows, a little more complicated flows, and then, like the first time, they do one from scratch. I'm literally going to write out every single element, like you're going to do, you're going to do a get, you're going to do a get, you're going to do an update, you're going to do a blah, blah, blah, go do it. And then, as time goes by, I give them less and less direction on how to write the flow until finally they're just doing it all. I'm taking the swimmies off.

Josh Matthews: 37:23

I mean, this is just like learning how to cook right. It's like let's learn how to crack an egg. Let's start there. You know and, and, and, then, and, then move on up. So this has been fantastic. I would like to give you an opportunity to share anything else that you can that you think our listeners might really benefit from hearing about articulating their flows, getting experience, identifying where they can get support, mentorship, leadership or just like a helping hand or anything else related to to to flows.

Christina Nava: 37:56

So your number one place. I think you should go as a Salesforce community. Join your local trailhead community group. If you're a woman or you're a woman supporter, join your local women in tech. I'm the co-leader of the Houston Women in Tech group. See if there's a Salesforce Saturday around you. But you want to get involved in the Salesforce ecosystem.

Christina Nava: 38:19

One of the things I love the most about Salesforce is the people. I have never felt so supported, except for when I joined Salesforce. You know, joined all of this ecosystem. It's been amazing. It's actually number one place. Um, number two is probably Google. I swear seriously, google is your friend. And then, you know, don't, don't get discouraged First. If you have any issues, go to Google. You know, don't just jump into the trailhead and on the community group and ask your question. Try and Google it first. But if you have any questions and didn't find it on Google, ask in the trailhead community. Tons of people will jump in and try to help you either. Give you the answer, ask clear and fine questions. That's what we love to do and I think Salesforce in the community really draws in the people who want to help and so you're really going to find a home way back in the early 2000s.

Josh Matthews: 39:29

And then, of course, now we're doing a lot of things in the community to be supportive. But it's a it's an incredible ecosystem of helpful people. And it's not just helpful people, there are all kinds. There are unhelpful people in here too, right, it's just, it's easier to find helpful people, right, you're not on your own.

Josh Matthews: 39:45

I'd also just to capitalize on everything that you said, which I a hundred percent agree with. I think you're totally spot on. You know, check out a dreaming event, right. Figure out where a good dream, like dreaming events are so good. You won't be overwhelmed and it's not as expensive, of course, as, say, a dream force. You have more time than one day world tour, right, we're going to be overwhelmed trying to absorb so much. Go to some of these local dreaming events and go to the session. Someone's always doing a session on flows, like always, if not more than that, right. So you go, check out that stuff. There's some wonderful stuff online. You can also visit expandexchangecom. That will connect you with a variety of different communities YouTubers, you know, vloggers, bloggers, training academies although I'm a little iffy on them these days, but there's a lot of really good stuff out there. So fantastic, so wonderful advice. Christina, tell us what comes next. So you're running the Houston. Say it again you're running WITI for Houston.

Christina Nava: 40:50

Houston Women in Tech User Group.

Josh Matthews: 40:52

Okay, yeah, fantastic. Are you going to be out and about what's the next conference you're going to be at or any upcoming plans where people can get to say hi to you in person?

Christina Nava: 41:02

I don't have any specific plans. I may or may not go to Texas. Streaming that's coming up in. May the very end of May.

Christina Nava: 41:09

I'm going to try to go to Dreamforce as normal, but it's expensive. Every year you get to beg your boss. Can I please go this year? So it's never a given, but there's a good chance. I'll be going to that one too. I don't know. There's tons. Obviously, if you're in the Houston area, you are At the Houston Women in Tech. We accept women and women supporters, women allies. So if you're a male, you're more than welcome to come.

Speaker 1: 41:35

That's good to know we are usually meeting in the evenings.

Christina Nava: 41:37

Hit me up on LinkedIn. I accept everybody. It's fine.

Josh Matthews: 41:41

Fantastic, and we'll put those links here on the video. You might not see it if you're listening to this podcast. It won't be there. So I think that's a wrap. My friend, I can't thank you enough for showing up. This is such a nice time to get to spend with you and it's a little special because I haven't produced a video in years for the YouTube channel. I think I can't think of a better way to go ahead and jump back into the thick of it. For those who are listening to the podcast, join us every other Wednesday. Live on X to the podcast. Join us every other Wednesday, live on X. We air live recorded shows at 530. This time, the next show, I plan on actually hitting the record button. So that'll be nice. Right, and feel free to certainly follow Christina. We'll have her link in the video down below. Thank you, my friend. Have a wonderful, wonderful week. Thanks for all you do in the community and for spending time with me here on this beautiful, what is it? Wednesday afternoon, wednesday evening.

Josh Matthews: 42:38

Thank you so much Okay, of course, anytime. You're always welcome back. I hope to see you on the live broadcasts again soon. Okay. Okay, all right, my friend. Bye for now. Thanks everybody for watching. Don't forget to like, subscribe, do all that usual stuff and share this. If this was helpful for you, help someone else and share it with them. Bye for now.