My Review of New Trailhead Badge: Record-Triggered Flows
A Brief Review of the New Record-Triggered Flows Badge on Trailhead
A while back I wrote a post where I reviewed a new badge at the time, Essential Habits for Salesforce Admins. In this post, I’m back with a review of the recently released badge, Record-Triggered Flows. I completed this new badge just yesterday, and in this post I want to provide my brief thoughts after completing this badge as well as sharing who I think the ideal audience is for this new Trailhead badge. Let’s begin with a bit of an overview.
About the Badge
This badge is a relatively quick badge to complete. It is made up of just four units. According to the guidance, Trailblazers would be expected to finish the badge in 1 hour and 10 minutes. Now if you’re more of an advanced Flow user, you could complete it significantly less time, I completed it in 26 and a half minutes. So if you’re someone relatively experienced in Flow, this badge will take very little time to complete overall. In terms of points, you will earn 1,200 points if you don’t get any answers wrong, the lowest number of points you could earn on this is 1,050 points (25 points is the lowest you can get on a quiz-based unit). So I imagine a large number of people will get 100% for this.
The units for this badge are as below:
- Get Started with Triggered Flows (100 points)
- Build a Record-Triggered Flow (500 points)
- Add a Scheduled Task to Your Flow (500 points)
- Meet Flow Trigger Explorer (100 points)
So that’s a bit of a brief overview of the badge. Let’s now get into my thoughts on it. Spoiler alert, they’re actually pretty positive. Let’s get into it.
My Thoughts on This Badge
Like I said, my thoughts on this badge are pretty positive overall. For me personally, this badge was a little basic … however, I would say that I am pretty good with Flow, I still have more to learn for sure, but I’d classify as someone who is more on the Advanced side of the skill spectrum for Flow. That being said, for what the badge is, an introduction to Record-Triggered Flows, Flow Trigger Explorer and Time-Based Workflow Monitoring, its a very good badge. I genuinely think for the content included, this badge delivers on its objectives extremely well. I’m not saying this because it’s Flow, but I would honestly say that this is one of the better badges I’ve done on Trailhead in recent months due to how it is pitched and how it delivers on said pitch.
Who is This Badge For Then?
The badge itself pitches itself as being designed for “intermediate Salesforce admins who are familiar with basic Salesforce customization features and have some experience using basic flows”. This is something I would agree with in theory, however, I do have a question here as to what Salesforce define as an intermediate Admin … but that is a discussion for another post. The main point I agree with here is that this badge will be most beneficial to someone who is getting started out with Flow. If you’re someone who is reasonably advanced with their Flow skills, this badge will essentially be teaching you how to suck eggs … I’ve never quite understood that cliche to be honest. Basically, it’s a badge best suited for people beginning with Flow, advanced Flow builders will find this badge extremely basic. But that’s not a bad thing.
Where Does This Badge Rank Among Other Flow Badges
I’ve done most of the Flow badges, I think there is only one I haven’t done (unless I’ve missed some that I don’t know about). Being fully transparent here, I think the Flow badges are genuinely some of the better badges in Trailhead. However, there is a significant lack of badges for advanced users, all of the Flow badges in Trailhead are beginner to intermediate level stuff. That isn’t necessarily a problem, but it does make ranking the badges a little more difficult (maybe that’s a future project, imagine a Tier list of Trailhead badges … is that too adventurous?). Going back to what I said in my previous point though, I think this ranks as one of the better badges because it delivers extremely on what is pitched in the badge and the audience it is designed for.
If I was to give you a top five list for Flow badges today, it would probably be:
- Record-Triggered Flows
- Build a Donor Email Flow for Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP)
- Flow Builder
- Build a Simple Flow
- Flow Basics
Like with this particular badge, I would argue that all of these badges are relatively simple, they do however all have a good amount of value, particularly for those new to Flow. You’ll notice from this list, that I actually placed this most recent badge at the top of the list. This isn’t recency bias, I genuinely would put this one at the top of the list for Flow badges. Hopefully this is a sign to come with more really good quality Flow badges coming out, I’d love to see more advanced badges for sure … not to mention a Salesforce Certification focusing on Process Automation, but that’s something I’ve talked about a lot, and this is not the post to talk about that certification idea.
N.B. I’ve actually created a Trailmix including these very five badges. For more, check out my Trailmix, Mark’s Top 5 Flow Badges for Trailblazers.
Key Takeaways from Completing This Badge
I don’t want to hammer this point too much, but as mentioned already, I think this badge delivers really well on the pitch it offers and the content it provides. I do however have a couple of key takeaways I wanted to offer.
So lets look at those now:
#1: You Can Use Global Variables in the Hands-On Challenges
So I want to first highlight a takeaway that may be a little bit of a spoiler. My apologies if this seems like I am giving away answers here, my intention here is not to enable people to cheat, but to highlight a point I feel is important in relation to how we build our Flows. That point being that in the hands-on challenge units, you will be asked to add a date into the Create Records elements that you are tasked with configuring. The way the requirement is written could give off the idea that you are supposed to hardcode a date value into the field. While you could do this and most likely pass the unit, this way of adding values to fields via Flow is not considered best practice. What is considered best practice for this type of task in Flow, is to have Flow populate your field values dynamically through the use of variables. This methodology allows for greater variance and it will make your life a lot easier as an Admin.
So when it comes to the hands-on challenges, you will be asked to add the current date to a date field in the Create Records Elements that you build. To achieve this you can simply add the Global Variable for current date or {!$Flow.CurrentDate} in its coded variable form. This would be what I advise you do as it will help you build up better habits as a Flow builder.
#2: This is a Great Flow to Help You Get Started Out
The second and final takeaway I want to offer here is that I think this badge is a great start to help you really get on the fast track to building good quality Flows. It allows you to sync your teeth into Record-Triggered Flows, which for most Admins will become their go to Flows, as they are the most comparable type of Flows to that of Workflow Rules and Process Builder. It also gives you a bit of a look at Flow Trigger Explorer which will become a very valuable resource to all Flow builders. It’s already pretty good, but as further changes are made to it the tool will only become better and more valuable. It also gives you a basic introduction into monitoring your Flows. Overall this badge is one I would say is a must for anyone getting started out with Flow. If you follow the material in this badge, I do genuinely think that you will be on a good starting path to learning Flow and becoming a competent Flow builder.
What Do I Want to See Next
To close, I thought it would be good to highlight some things I would like to see come to Trailhead in the future regarding Flows. I imagine much of my list is already in the pipeline, but I’ll still list it anyways. I’d love to hear what you think about this list in the comments below or on social media.
Here’s my list:
- Schedule-Triggered Flows
- A Hands-On Flow Orchestrator Badge
- Autolaunched Flows
- Flow Badges Based on Specific Use Cases
- Order of Execution with Flow Trigger Explorer
- Advanced Flows
And of course, a Salesforce Certification focusing on Process Automation … maybe tentatively titled Process Automation Consultant. Just saying.
So that’s my list and my thoughts on this new badge. Once again, I do think this might be the best Flow badge on Trailhead so far. I think it’s pitched well and delivers on that pitch in the right way. It’s basic for sure, but it’s designed to be a basic introduction. My advice to any Trailblazer starting out with Flow is to add this to your list of Flow badges to complete. Check out my top 5 badges maybe, ideally start out with Flow basics and towards the end move onto this badge. I’ve said it a few times already, but I’d love to hear what you thought of this badge. So let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
I’ll be back in a couple of days with another post, and I’ll hopefully have a few posts coming out over the next few weeks. I have a few in the pipeline related to Flow, but I also have some other content that I am working on. If you have any topics you’d like me to cover, let me know, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Resources
- Record-Triggered Flows: Learn the basics of record-triggered flows.
- Reviewing the New “Essential Habits for Salesforce Admins” Badge
- Mark’s Top 5 Flow Badges for Trailblazers
