Connecting Workflow Rules to Picklists in Salesforce
One of the great features in Salesforce is all the different ways you can use Picklists. They’re great, simple ways to auto-populate information that streamlines Salesforce so it’s easier to use. In our first post, we looked at how we can link together two Picklists. In this post, we’ll go over how you can link a Workflow Rule to a Picklist.
Think of this as creating a chain reaction that will trigger different actions that you can control within Salesforce. For our use-case example, we’re going to create a Workflow Rule that is triggered off the Employees Field on an Account. That, in turn, will auto-populate a Segment Field with a Picklist value.
STEP ONE: Within the admin section click on “Workflow Rules” in order to go to the All Workflow Rules page. Click on New Rule to create a new Workflow Rule.
STEP TWO: In the Object Field, select Account. Click on Next.
STEP THREE: Now we have to configure the Workflow Rule. In the Rule Name Field, create a unique name. In this example, our Rule Name will be Segment — ENT. For this use-case example, we want a trigger that results in the Segment Field auto-populating with the ENT value. (For this example, an Enterprise-sized company has greater than 10,000 employees) In the Evaluation Criteria section, you determine when the rule is going to be evaluated. You have three choices — you can evaluate upon creation, upon creation and every time it is updated, or upon creation and anytime it’s edited to subsequently meet criteria. At LeanData, we select the second option: Created, and every time it’s edited. Then finally in Rule Criteria, you have two choices. You can either select when “criteria are met” and create those parameters in the fields below. Or the second option is you can import a formula. Enter what makes sense for your company, click on Save & Next. This will take you to the Specify Workflow Actions page.
STEP FOUR: Here, we have to specify a workflow action. You have two choices: Immediate Workflow Actions and Time-Dependent Workflow Action. For this example, we’ll use one of the Immediate Workflow Actions. Under Add Workflow Action, click on New Field Update.
Here, you will fill in the value you want this field updated to when the conditions are met. Under the Name Field, I’d recommend that we use the same naming convention as your Workflow Rule Update: Segment — ENT. That also will auto-populate the Unique Name Field. Under Description, write a brief description: In this use-case example, we’re going to add “Update the Segment to ENT.”
Finally, on the Field to Update box, click on the drop-down menu and locate the desired field of “Segment.”
Click on Next. That will bring up a section called Specify New Field Value. You have three picklist options. You can either clear out the value in a field, input the results of a formula, or set a specific value. For this example, we’ll use the specific value that we want our field to be updated to. So we select ENT. Then hit Save and Next.
Then Click Done.
STEP FIVE: Click on Activate to launch your workflow rule.
RESULT: Every time the Employees Field on the account is created or edited, and its value is greater than 10,000, the Segment Field will be automatically updated to the ENT value. Congratulations, we’ve connected a WorkFlow Rule to a Picklist.
To read the first post, “Linking Together Two Picklists in Salesforce,” click here.