# Associate Actions with Records

To associate actions to records declaratively, configure channel-specific defaults in an Actions & Recommendations deployment or use Process Builder. To associate flows to records programmatically, use SOAP or Apex. After you add the Actions & Recommendations component to your Lightning pages, you can display RecordActions that you’ve configured.

- **[Associate Actions to Records with a Deployment](/docs/service/salesforce-guided-engagement/guide/guided-engagement-setup-associate-deployment.md)**

  Use an Actions & Recommendations deployment to show default actions when records open from phone screen popups, chats, list views, or related records. A deployment also lets you show recommendations from Next Best Action strategies. After you create a deployment, select it in the Actions & Recommendations component on your Lightning record pages.

- **[Associate Actions to Records with Process Builder](/docs/service/salesforce-guided-engagement/guide/guided-engagement-setup-process-builder.md)**

  Process Builder is a point-and-click automation tool that you can use to design processes that kick off when a new or updated record meets specific criteria. After you create flows and quick actions, you can associate them with a record by building a process. Use Process Builder to create a process that, when triggered, creates a RecordAction. The RecordAction represents an association between an action and the record that kicked off the process.

- **[Associate Actions to Records with SOAP](/docs/service/salesforce-guided-engagement/guide/guided-engagement-setup-process-soap.md)**

  If your business maintains code outside the Salesforce platform, you can use SOAP API to create, retrieve, update, or delete a RecordAction.

- **[Associate Actions to Records with Apex](/docs/service/salesforce-guided-engagement/guide/guided-engagement-setup-process-apex.md)**

  If you want to control how you trigger the creation of a RecordAction, you can use Apex to associate actions to records. The RecordAction object is exposed as a standard object in Apex. You can trigger it before a DML operation or on delete or undelete. You can also provide custom error handling.

**See Also**

- [Developer Documentation: *Process Automation Cheatsheet*](https://resources.docs.salesforce.com/rel1/doc/en-us/static/pdf/SF_Process_Automation_cheatsheet_web.pdf)