Process Builder: A Closer Look

When you create a process in the Process Builder, you start by choosing an object, for example, a Position. Then you tell the Process Builder what to evaluate when someone creates or changes a Position record. For example, your process can check whether a Position has a status of Open – Approved. When it does, your process executes an action, like sending a company-wide email so everyone knows that a new position has opened in the company. You can define multiple criteria nodes in a single process and associate groups of actions with each criteria node.

The object you choose as the basis of your process influences the fields that are available for setting the criteria. For example, if we create a process for a Job Application object, we can set the criteria based on the values of fields like Job Application Number and Status. We can also set the criteria based on standard fields, such as Record Owner or Created Date, as well as fields based on the currently active user when the criteria is evaluated, such as their Role or Time Zone.

With the Process Builder, you can even schedule actions to trigger at specified times. If you need your process to do more than what those actions allow, you can even call Apex from a process. We won’t be getting into Apex here, but just know that it’s a very powerful and flexible way to add functionality to your process.

We'll look at all the ways that we can set criteria and define actions a little later. For now, just understand that the platform makes it very easy to create detailed processes that target specific situations.