Tips on passing the Process Automation Specialist Superbadge on Trailhead
Automation is part of every project I came across so far and the requirements around it are becoming more and more sophisticated. Time invested in learning and getting more familiar with all things automation on Salesforce seems therefore a good idea, especially if you are an everyday admin as well as a functional consultant. It’s time to get a new superbadge: the Process Automation Specialist!
A quick introduction on Superbadges, in case this is your first to attempt. As the usual modules, they are hosted on Trailhead but require pre-requisites such as certain modules to be completed before you can get started with the badge. In comparison to the usual modules, they have high-level requirements but the detailed solution is up to the person building the processes and doesn’t follow step-by-step guidance. Time investment starts from about five hours for the superbadge itself and can extend depending on the complexity of the requirements. It’s absolutely worth doing superbadges, even though your number of badges on your profile will only increase by one when passing. Your understanding of the area of the badge will increase loads so will your confidence in that subject.
Let’s get started with the Process Automation Specialist. It is tempting to simply start to build and validate your first challenge but don’t be hasty! Follow the pre-requisites even if it seems less fun. I learned that when passing all challenges the first time around when validating, you get a first ascent flag. That sounds fun. I didn’t get that this time, but when following the instructions you have first, you surely have a good chance. Read all the instructions, create a new Trailhead Playground (this will also contain data needed for validation which makes your life easier), install any packages needed, and yes get a pen and paper. Loved the — for me — new feature on my playground whereby you can copy the ID of the package into a textbox and get it installed without getting your credentials first. Yes! Also new on this superbadge for me were the videos per step. Very useful to watch and get to the right conclusions. Now on the various challenges and what I learned from each step along the way.
Automate Leads
This challenge asks for some standard features such as queues which are pretty straight forward. What I did find helpful again was reviewing the documentation around formula functions. Hint: don’t forget there are two pages for that!
Automate Accounts
Again seemed straight forward and then I got hung up on the requirement to have a field showing ‘Last won deal date’. In case that happens to you too, check again this page to remind yourself of how magical roll-ups are. Hint: Remeber that the beginning of the badge stated that workflow rules are not required for this badge. Also remember not to over-engineer thing, again if you struggle check out the above page about roll-ups.
Create Robot Setup Object
This first went wrong as I wasn’t reading precisely enough what is required. It says that the Robot Setup name format should be along the lines of: ROBOT SETUP-####. When creating a record I got something like ‘a248JKdje2823Fg’ as the name. That wasn’t quite right. Hint: When creating a new object, you can configure its features way before creating any custom fields. This initial setup determines how the name is displayed such as text or auto-number.
Create Sales Process and Validate Opportunities
Creating a sales process in Salesforce to get started with this challenge. It first didn’t validate for me. Hint: Before checking your challenge, make sure that you are also reading the little text block next to the current challenge you are checking. There might be some things mentioned here that you otherwise miss, such as creating a record type.
Automate Opportunities
Approvals yeaaahh! This can always get a bit tricky with various steps, templates, entry criteria and what not to set. Hint: Remember there is a starting criteria saying that you should have a user called ‘Nushi Davoud’ in the system. Also remind yourself when looking at your approval process, where the approver gets set. This might be in more than one place, this is what got me and why the validation first failed.
Create Flow for Opportunities
This was by far the hardest part for me in the whole process and I wasn’t quite sure how to get started. This is where pen and paper became useful and I first started writing down what is it that we actually want to achieve. I then took a little look on Gemma’s blog (Thanks Gemma!) to see how best to start and that was a great starting point. In the end I managed to get results but again in a funky Id format rather than as a name. Hint: If in doubt, Google surely has an answer and came up for me with this. Thanks to SalesforceYoda for explaining again how a loop works in a flow. And tada, the names are displayed.
Update In the meantime, since posting this, I learned a few tricks on this particular flow. I didn’t update the above as I believe knowing about loops is in general a useful skill. Nevertheless, the flow in question can actually be incredibly short and I recommend looking into Record Choice Sets and how they work.
Automate Setups
After creating the flow, this seemed to be an easier challenge to tackle. Again I went back to the formula documentation. Hint: Checkout WEEKDAY and remember the classic IF.
I am sure there is more than one way to resolve various challenges so your solution might vary slightly to what I described above. Overall a great superbadge to get more into process automation and I shall surely look further into flows. Happy Trailblazing!
