From gaming to gaining insights
At the beginning of his career, Paolo was all about modding computer games. This hobby gave him a solid grasp of coding structures and sparked his interest in tech. Back in 2005, Paolo was first introduced to Salesforce, earning three Salesforce certifications before he joined Common Sense Media in 2019. At Common Sense Media, he dove into the world of flows, starting with the tricky task of reverse engineering his predecessor’s work. It was like solving a complex algebra problem, and it got him hooked on building out simple, effective workflows.
The “flownatic” mindset
Paolo had become what is known in the Salesforce community as a “flownatic” — someone who loves building automations with Salesforce Flow. He streamlined all kinds of processes using Salesforce Flow, so when he encountered a disconnected data problem, he thought about how to solve it with automation. The problem was that three different verticals needed to get real-time data updates on a regular basis, but the users who needed to input and receive the data weren’t regularly using Salesforce; they were using Slack.
Bringing Salesforce into Slack
As an avid Slack user himself, Paolo got an idea: What if he could bring Salesforce into Slack so that these Slack-first users could update their data and get the insights they needed without having to open a separate Salesforce window?
Paolo dove into learning about Slack Workflow Builder. Being a Salesforce flownatic, he was well versed in the approaches and terminology used in Workflow Builder. It was just a matter of days before he architected a solution that combined Salesforce Flow and Slack Workflow Builder that automated collecting data and sharing insights that worked across both Salesforce and Slack.
Salesforce Flow + Slack Workflow Builder
Using Workflow Builder, Paolo crafted direct messages that prompted team members to input data on a scheduled cadence via a form, which then gets processed by an auto-launched flow in Salesforce. The flow creates a record on a custom object in Salesforce to populate a CRM Analytics dashboard. The best part? This dashboard was shared back into Slack, keeping the whole organization in the loop.
Translating Salesforce skills to Slack skills
For Paolo, the key to understanding Slack Workflow Builder was to know that its processes are linear; there are no branching paths like there are in Salesforce Flow. The main challenge was adapting to Workflow Builder, which lacks the conditional logic found in Flow. To overcome this, Paolo incorporated a hidden value in each workflow to identify the department of the metric, which the Salesforce flow then uses to route and record the data correctly. He developed multiple scheduled workflows for stakeholders to update their metrics, such as monthly press hits updates. These workflows send reminders via direct messages, prompting stakeholders to input their metrics into a form. Paolo then used a Salesforce action to initiate a flow that creates a new record with this data.
Paolo describes his experience as doing a dance between what was possible with Workflow Builder and what was possible with Flow, figuring out which tasks were best handled between each tool. Once he got those dance moves down, it was easy for him to build a solution that worked across both Slack and Salesforce.
Empowering others
Paolo’s knack for creating intuitive workflows didn’t just make his life easier — it also empowered other departments, like design and engineering, to craft their own solutions with Slack workflows. His work showcased the scalability and user-friendliness of his integrations.
Looking ahead
Paolo sees Slack as the spiderweb that can connect all systems, beyond Salesforce, providing the interface for everyone in an organization to collaborate and interact with systems in one place. That’s why he is setting his sights on beefing up his coding skills to dive into more complex app development, possibly leveraging Slack’s new pro-code features that support languages like Python and JavaScript. He wants other Salesforce admins — especially flownatics — to start building in Slack, because it opens up so many possibilities to solve problems in new ways.
