Salesforce Integration Made Easy with Workato Part 2 of 2

In part 1 we talked about what Workato is and what it can do.  Now it is time to look at how it works.

In the tutorial that follows we will create a FREE event registration tool using a combination of Google Sheets/Google Forms and Workato to push event registration records to Salesforce.

If you want to follow along you will need the following as prerequisites:

• Workato Account – get one HERE
• Google Account with access to create a Google Form/Sheet *
  • Form Fields:
    • Company Name
    • First Name
    • Last Name
    • Email Address
    • Phone Number
    • Meal Preference
    • Comments
• Salesforce Environment with API Access and the following custom objects:
  • Events
    • Fields:
      • Event Name (from object)
      • Event Description (Text Area)
      • Event Start Date & Time (Date/Time)
  • Event Registrations
    • Fields:
      • Event (Master/Detail – Event)
      • Event Participant (Master/Detail – Contact)
      • Meal Preference (Picklist)

*This YouTube Video will walk you through building a Google Form

Event Object Custom Fields:

Event Registration Object Custom Fields:

Now its time to switch over to Workato.

The first thing we need to do is establish connections with our apps.  Click your name in the upper right corner then select Connections.

Next click Create Connections

Name your Connection and tell Workato whether you are connecting to a Sandbox or Production environment.

I recommend that you always test in a Sandbox before doing anything in production, however, Workato supports Professional Edition which does not have a sandbox option.

You will then be presented with a pop-up where you will need to sign in to your Salesforce account.

Next, click Allow as the final step of the authentication process.

You will need to go through a similar process to connect your Google Apps account to Workato.

Once you have done that you will be ready to create the event registration recipe.

Since our event attendees wil register using a Google Form we will use its corresponding Google Sheet as the trigger application.

The Google Form will dump submissions into a Google Spreadsheet which we will reference in our recipe. Leave the Trigger in its default value of New spreadsheet row added.

Now that the trigger is defined its time to create our actions.

Follow the prompts and create an action that creates a new Account in Salesforce.

Next, map the fields from your Google Spreadsheet to the Account object with a simple drag and drop.  In our example we only need the Account Name which comes from the Company field in our sheet. In reality you would probably want to collect more information like a mailing address, website, etc.

Scroll to the bottom of the available fields and find/click the Add New Action link. In some cases you may want to create conditions (ex. only do step 2 if a field has a certain value).  For our exercise we always want to perform the action so we will select the first option.

We will create a Contact in our next step.  Select Salesforce as the Application then choose Create Contact for the Action.

We all know that Salesforce is a relational database and Contacts need to be related to Accounts.  If you have spent any time in Dataloader you know that you need ID’s in order to relate records to one another.  Workato makes it simple to get the ID from the Account that was created in Step 1.  Drag and drop the ID from Step 1 to the Account ID field.

Continue mapping your First Name, Last Name, Phone and Email fields to the Contact object. In a real world scenario you might want to include other fields in your map and/or default values for things such as Lead Source.

Workato offers support for custom objects which is great because we built two of them that will be used in this process – Event and Event Registration. For our third action we need to select Create Object and select Event Registration.

If you haven’t already created an Event record in your Salesforce org do so now and grab the record ID from the URL.

Follow these steps to complete action number 3:

1. Paste the Event ID into the Event field.
2. Select the Contact ID from Step 2
3. Map the Meal Preference field from your Google Sheet
4. Map the Comments field from your Google Sheet
5. When you are done scroll back to the top of the screen and save your recipe.

Click the “Next” button, change your Recipe name and description. Just like workflow rules in Salesforce have to be activated you will need to START your recipe in order for it to run.

Now its time to test our recipe.

Navigate to your Google Form and submit a test.

Success!  Our Account, Contact, and Event Registration records have all been created.

Be sure to take into account the following before deploying something like this for your organization:

• One of the biggest things you need to consider with this solution is that it will be very easy to create duplicate Account or Contact records.  Workato supports the ability to search for an Account or Contact before creating a new one, however, it requires an exact match.  Other tools offer “fuzzy” matching such as the new native duplicate blocking tool that launched with Spring ’15 or consider tools from the AppExchange like DupeBlocker.
• Keep in mind any workflow or validation rules that run on the creation of new Account or Contact Records.
• Specify an appropriate owner for the records that are being created otherwise you as the administrator who created the recipe will own records created by this process by default.

While this particular scenario may not apply to your organization I hope you can see the power of Workato.  Keep in mind that it supports dozens of other apps with more being added all of the time.

What will your first recipe do? Sound off in the comments.