The Joys of Flows

I built an app called Proton Text that allows users to send and receive text messages from within Salesforce; it's available from the Salesforce AppExchange, the link is at the bottom of the article. What I want to share today is my genuine delight that Salesforce's automation tools—Process Builder and Flow Builder—allow me and my customers to extend my app's capabilities, customizing it to the needs of my customers' users.

The picture at the top isn't just pretty (in the geekiest of ways), it's also something I built today, available for download from my free automation library. In my app, there's a feature called Proton Blaster that allows you to send Bulk SMS to hundreds of thousands of people on a "blast list"—and this is the flow that lets you add people to that list. Generally, you would import a whole list of people at once, but occasionally, you might want to just add a person or two, and this flow will make it easy.

I created the automation library (it continues to grow) because it's just the kind of resource I would want in a product. All the flows and processes are available as unmanaged packages, and they're all free. That means you can download them, read my detailed explanations, open them up, learn from them, edit them to meet your own needs. I'm trying to demonstrate flexibility, integration with the platform tools, and an ongoing passion to make things that work great! And, I'm hoping it will serve as a model for other partners. (I'll be happy to share how I set it up.)

I'd love feedback. Let me know if this is a valuable approach for software vendors. And you can always check out Proton Text on the AppExchange.