Gmail changes, Flow URLs, and smarter engineering operations. Hello from Kicksaw!
Hello friend,
It’s the season for giving thanks, and there’s no doubt that there’s a lot to be thankful for here at Kicksaw. We just experienced our most profitable month as a company, we’re actively hiring, our clients are experiencing success and coming back to us for more work, CEO Kenny Goldman is dropping hot tips on awesome podcasts…the list goes on. But I would be remiss if I failed to mention that we are thankful for YOU, our audience. Thank you for engaging with us — for listening to what we have to say. We’re passionate about sharing what we know with the world, and this newsletter gives us a great way to do that, so thank you for making it worth our while.?
In case you missed it, I’ve been bitten by the writing bug, and I’ve written two essays that I hope will help you get to know me, Kicksaw, and even Kenny just a little bit better. My first essay was on starting a business with someone you never met in person, and the second, just published last week, was on how military service paved the way for a successful startup venture.
Again, thank you for reading, and please enjoy this newsletter! There’s so much good advice in here, and some of it is pretty timely (check out the section on Gmail’s pending changes and how you need to update your email lists in order to avoid an IP reputation hit).?
~Kyle Morris, Co-founder
Solution Showcase: Engineering Operations
It’s not hard to find a Salesforce consulting firm with some in-house engineers available to help with your integration — custom coding options are becoming a fairly standard perk across the industry. That’s awesome, and it can be incredibly helpful.? What’s not so common, though, is an engineering team leveraging the power of Fractional Operations (AKA consulting done the right way) to bring some serious muscle to your project.?
Some businesses only have requirements that can be neatly addressed by Salesforce’s (or similar business software) native, out-of-the-box capabilities. If that’s you, great! But…that’s probably not you.? ?
With a strong emphasis on Salesforce development, Mulesoft, AWS infrastructure, and a wide range of technical expertise, our team is prepared to address your most intricate technical hurdles with precision and innovation. Our extensive industry knowledge, combined with our deep platform expertise, has made Kicksaw a partner known for delivering business value, and for implementing solutions that set you up for continued growth. EOPS is a key factor in our ongoing success, as our engineers are dedicated to delivering continuous value and strategic partnership throughout the duration of your engagement. Learn more by clicking the image below!
Red Alert for Marketers: Important Changes Coming to Gmail
In December of 2023, Google will roll out a change to Gmail that has the potential to incur damage to your reputation as an email marketer. Make sure you take the following actions to prevent taking a hit.
What change is Google making?
Earlier this year, Google announced they were changing their policies around inactive accounts. Essentially, Google noticed a trend that inactive Gmail accounts were vulnerable to hacking, and because of this, spammers would take control of these email addresses to send unwanted messages. To combat spammers from seizing legitimate and active Gmail users, Google implemented two-factor authorization a few years ago. Further action is needed, though, which means that in December of 2023 (that's in a few days, folks!), in order to further reduce the number of hijacked email addresses, Gmail will deactivate accounts that haven’t been used in two years.?
Who will be affected?
All Gmail users who have a personal Gmail account and haven’t accessed it in two or more years will be affected. This change does not affect business, education, or workspace accounts. Personal accounts with a paid subscription may also be exempt.?
When will Google start making these changes?
Google will begin deleting these inactive accounts in December and will continue to eliminate the inactive email addresses in a phased approach.
How will this impact your email marketing efforts?
If you are sending to your full database, you will potentially see a spike in hard bounces. Hard bounces occur when you send emails to addresses that do not exist, and a high hard bounce rate will negatively impact your email reputation. Furthermore, a low email reputation will reduce your likelihood of having your message reach the inboxes of your active database members. Learn more about email deliverability here.?
Kicksaw's Recommendations:
As always, if you need some assistance ensuring that your email lists are squeaky clean, Kicksaw is here for you! Reach out to get in touch with our Marketing Operations team if you have questions, concerns, or want any more information on this pending change.
What Does It Take To Become a Kicksaw Salesforce Consultant?
The next installment in our series on what it's like to work in various roles at Kicksaw is here! Learn how we approach the Salesforce Consultant role differently in this blog post.
Sometimes, a job title is really self-explanatory. If you’re a farmer, you farm crops. If you are an accountant, you keep the books. But if you’re a Salesforce Consultant, well…that depends on who you ask. As pretty much anyone who’s worked for more than one company will tell you, consulting (and Salesforce work in general) can be a vastly different experience at any given firm.?Click here to learn more!
领英推荐
Redirect Users to a Screen Flow after a Record is Approved by a Manager
This month, Kicksaw Salesforce Admin?Sarah Yoo walks us through a flow that will make manager approvals simpler thanks to a flow URL.?
Hi folks! Sarah here. I was recently tasked with giving users the ability to be directed to a screen flow that takes a certain path after a record is approved by their manager. The user needed to then be able to check the details of the approved record, and then the flow needed to finish making updates to the record before creating related records. This was a tricky one since approval processes only allow you to make field updates, send emails, or create a generic task. After some head scratching, flow URLs seemed to be the answer. By going this route, we wouldn't need to install a third-party app or package, or write any Apex code.?
So, how did we get the URL to direct users to a new flow after a record is approved? Well, there are two flows that came into play here:
Let’s say the first flow, named "Request Time Off," that is launched with the flow URL is a screen flow that allows users to submit a PTO request, and that also allows the requesting user to confirm details after it has been approved. We’ll keep it simple by saying the PTO request automatically gets approved if it’s one business day or shorter. If the request is longer than one day, the record is automatically submitted for approval to the manager, and the manager is notified that they now have a PTO request to review for approval. If the request is approved, the second, record-triggered flow will run when the status is updated to "approved." The flow will create a task with the record ID of the approved request in this format:
In order to create the task with the flow URL that redirects the user back to the screen flow, we’ll go into the View Details and Versions area of the screen flow and get the URL.
In our record-triggered flow that runs when the Time Off Request is approved, we then create the varScreenFlowURL variable with the URL from the screen flow as the default value, as well as the varRecordId that will be passed back into the Request Time Off screen flow.?
Our flow URL formula resource will look like this:
Now let's go back to the screen flow. By creating a text variable for input, named [varRecordId], that we inserted into our flow URL, that record ID of the approved record to be passed back into the flow. With that record ID now passed into the screen flow, we’re going to query for that record and check to see that the record exists in a decision element. If the record ID does not exist, the flow will continue as normal, with the user having the option to submit the initial request back to their manager.
If the record ID does exist, the flow will take a different path to allow the user to confirm the details of the approved request, see any notes their manager added, and allow the flow to finish. When it finishes, the flow creates a related record that indicates the days the user is out of office, identifies which employee that will be covering for them, and names any in-progress projects that need to be transferred.?
We can of course allow users to be notified that the record has been approved, then select another action to review the record and have that action trigger a flow to finish the final updates. However, this particular client wanted to reduce the number of clicks and areas users needed to check, since they are working with a high volume of records. This task assignment and flow URL redirect completes the remaining updates for the user after confirmation in one process.?
I hope you find this demonstration of how flow URLs can streamline an approval process helpful! And of course, please do reach out if you have any questions or want to learn more about this process.
One More Thing: A hot tip on report and dashboard subscriptions
Thought you hit a paywall without a secret door? Think again. If your org is not on Unlimited Edition, but you need more than those seven report or dashboard subscriptions, just submit a ticket to increase your limit to 15. Easy peasy.
More hot tips than a flaming hedgehog,
The Kicksaw Team