The underused workflow action

Its rare that you have worked in Salesforce for some time and have not heard about workflows.Ask anyone what are the actions of workflow they start counting and uttering :

1. Create task
2. Send email
3. Update field
4. Outbound message

Everyone knows and have implemented the first three, but wait what is this outbound message. Is it a text message? To be honest when I was exploring workflow I did not even open that section.It was like a hollow cave that I did not want to explore.If I had really learned it when I got a chance I could have avoided a lot of apex code in integration.

Yes! you heard it right outbound message is an optimal solution for outbound integrations. Speaking in technical language outbound message allows to send message with field values to designated external servers when changes to fields occur in Salesforce. You can achieve an integration with few points and clicks using outbound message.

Some of the features that makes outbound message a rock star are :

• In built retry mechanism
• Single message can include up to 100 notifications
• No code maintenance

However a major drawback can be noted as the destination has to be specifically tailored to accept the SOAP messages being sent from Salesforce. For the existing third party web services this can be noted as a problem because you will have to revamp the whole service just to accept the messages.

It does not hurt to know all the options before you decide on the optimal solutions.So next time you get an integration requirement try to explore outbound message and find if it can solve the problem because the retry mechanism that Salesforce is providing out of the box is not a small feature to overlook.

For more reference check out the documentation link