[SalesForce] How to use collections within a flow

I'm trying to use a combination of process builder and flow to accomplish the following. When an order is completed, create an invoice and invoice lines that are based off of the order and order lines. I can easily create the process builder to fire when the order is complete and start the flow that will create the invoice. I'm getting stuck on how to get the order lines and create the corresponding billing lines. Is this possible using flow? Any examples would be helpful.

Also, is it possible to reference custom settings in flow to pull in address info that is stored in a custom setting?

Thanks.

Best Answer

The entire flow is pretty cumbersome to layout (because it's a visual programming language), but here's a basic outline.

First, create your flow. Next, create a simple variable with a data type of Text, and a Input/Output Type of Input Only. You can call this orderId.

Next, create five SObject Variables, orderRecord, invoiceRecord, tempOrderLineItem, invoiceLineItem, and tempInvoiceLineItem, and two SObject Collection variables, orderLineRecords and invoiceLineRecords, all of the appropriate data types.

Third, create a Fast Lookup that looks up your order record, filtered by the Order Id = {!orderId}, and mark it as the start element. Create another Fast Lookup that loads orderLineRecords.

After that, you need use an Assignment to create all the values for your invoiceRecord to copy data from the orderRecord, and a Fast Create call to create the Invoice. After this, set up a loop that loops over the orderLineRecords using the variable tempOrderLineItem.

Create a new Assignment that sets invoiceLineItem to tempInvoiceLineItem, which creates a new blank item, then another Assignment that copies all the values you want from tempOrderLineItem and invoiceRecord to invoiceLineItem, and finally, an Assignment that adds invoiceLineItem to invoiceLineRecords.

For the exit branch of the loop, add another Fast Create for the invoiceLineRecords collection, and you're done with the flow.

For the final step, in the Process Builder, attach the Order Id to the flow's input orderId. This is how the Process Builder tells the Flow which order should be copied.

Here's what the flow should look like when you're done:

For the second question: yes, you can query custom settings just like normal objects (e.g. create a variable and then perform a Lookup). You can also create Formulas that can reference the Hierarchy custom setting, just like a validation rule. List Custom Settings must be queried, however, as there is no formula syntax to access those values at this time.

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[SalesForce] How to access child record IDs through lookup in a Flow

Ok, here's how I would do this. You're good with passing the ID into the Flow to get what the address should be.

Make a Record Lookup pointing to your source record to get your desired Address values pulled into various variables.
From there, you need to get a sObject Collection of all of the records that you want to change. Create a Fast Lookup for this, searching your target object for all records where the Parent Record is equal to the parent ID variable you passed in at the beginning.
In the Fast Lookup, set your Variable to an SObject Collection Variable. You'll want to also set your Fields at the very bottom to any Address fields you wish to possibly change.
Now create a Loop. Your loop should set to loop through the SOBject Collection Variable you just created, and the Loop variable should be a new SObject Variable. This tells the Flow that it needs to start going through every record you captured in the Collection, and the SObject Variable states/holds which record is currently being used by the Loop.
From your Loop, point to a new Assignment element. In your Assignment element, you can set the SObject Variable's address fields to the various values you got from your initial Record Lookup. You can set all of the fields in one Assignment.
You've actually completed the loop now. Draw an arrow back from your Assignment element to the Loop element.
Now make a Fast Update, telling it to update the SObject Collection Variable that contained all your records. Draw an arrow from your Loop element to the Fast Update, telling it to run when all records have been run in the Loop.

The Fast Lookup gets all the records and data that needs to be changed, the Loop passes each record to a handler, the Assignment changes the values in the handler, then goes back to the Loop to get a new record. It will repeat this until it runs out of records, then runs a Fast Update to push everything back up to the system. Slick, eh?

[SalesForce] How to loop a set number of times using visual flow

Unfortunately, the flow Loop element doesn't work that way. The correct method is to build a three-part loop, which has an initialization Assignment, a Decision branch to know when to stop, and an increment Assignment to increase the counter value.

As you can see, step 1 initializes Counter to 0, then we head into a decision where Counter is less than 3. If so, we enter the Loop branch, which does whatever logic you like, then adds 1 to Counter. This repeats until Counter equals 3, at which point it continues to the Continue branch.

The equivalent version of this in Apex Code would be:

for(Integer counter = 0; counter < 3; counter++) {
  // Do logic here
}

Best Answer

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