One of Salesforce’s most powerful automation tools is the ability to construct and manage complex business processes, regardless of if they are executed serially or in parallel. Because Manufacturing Cloud leverages the resources available to Sales & Service Clouds, there are at least three ways that these processes can be built:
WORKFLOW RULES are the easiest to build; however, they are also the least flexible option. Workflow gives you the ability to create a task, send an email, update a field, or send an outbound message.
PROCESS BUILDER allows you to build more complex processes with a higher degree of flexibility, including the incorporation of conditional scenarios to yield a wider variety of output. A simple example of when Process Builder would be required over a Workflow Rule is if a new task needs to be dynamically assigned to a user in a certain role on an Account Team. For instance, if you have not met with a customer for a certain period, the process can assign a task to the Inside Sales Rep / Account Manager / etc. that covers the relationship, so they know to reach out. If you need multiple roles to execute multiple actions, this can also be accomplished. Another huge bonus of Process Builder is its user-friendliness setting up a new or editing an existing process involves supreme visualization (think flowcharts) as well as “point and click” configuration. That said, there are nuances that we typically review with clients if you choose to maintain the processes going forward.
FLOW is the most flexible and complex tool for workflow automation. Flows can be used to build processes around dynamic data collection and for creating call scripts, requiring a technical background to set up and maintain.
Workflows can also be created “behind the scenes” to operate exclusively within Salesforce when they do not necessarily map to a business process but can help with user-friendliness and adoption. For example, you may have a customer listed as a “Prospect” and when you close your first opportunity with them, you want to automatically update the type from “prospect” to “client”.