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Cadence Automation Tools
The automation tools and templates included in Sales Engagement provide effective ways to streamline your cadences. Learn more about your cadence automation options.
Required Editions
| Available in: Lightning Experience |
| Available with Sales Engagement, which is included with Sales in Performance, Einstein 1, and Unlimited Editions, and available for an extra cost in Professional and Enterprise Editions. Sales Engagement is also available for an extra cost in Service and Lightning Platform. |
Automated Actions
Automated actions let sellers and first-line managers save time by giving them the ability to specify an action to perform, set conditions that trigger the action, and kick off automation on records they own. Automated actions are a quick and easy way for users to make their jobs easier and more efficient with targeted automations without the need for a Salesforce admin. Managers can also create automated actions for their subordinates. Each automated action can be set to perform its action automatically or to notify the record owner to choose whether to perform the action.
Managers can create up to 25 automated actions for their subordinates. Sales Reps can create up to 50 automated actions for themselves. There is a daily limit of 250 automated action executions per user and 20k executions for all users. When the limit is exceeded, the automated action stops executing until the start of the following day.
These actions trigger when a record is created and, optionally, every time a field is updated to meet certain conditions.
Sales Engagement includes five preconfigured automated actions that reps can use.
- Assign target to cadence
- Remove target from all cadences
- Pause target in all cadences
- Resume target in all cadences
- Change all cadence target assignees
For more information about building automated actions, see Create an Automated Action.
Keep these considerations in mind when using automated actions.
- Automated actions can’t update fields.
- Automated actions only trigger Sales Engagement actions and don’t support other types of platform development capabilities.
- Automated actions apply only to leads within the same territory as the automated action creator.
- Each automated action creator should have territory boundaries set to prevent the overlap of automated actions for prospects that may fall in multiple territories. This approach prevents multiple automated actions from modifying the same lead, contact, or person account record.
- Automated actions are best for individual users and first line managers. For higher-scale or company-wide automations, use Flow instead.
- When a lead is created, add the lead to a cadence. For example, a Follow Up on Interested Prospects cadence.
- When a contact has opted out of email, remove the lead from the cadence.
- When a lead is marked as unqualified, remove the lead from the cadence.
- When a contact replies to an email, change the cadence assignee.
- When an opportunity is lost, add the primary contact to a cadence, such as a Recover a Lost Opportunity cadence.
- When a case is closed, add the primary contact to a cadence.
Cadence Step Flows
Screen flows are a powerful type of flow that provides the ability to present one or more screens to the rep, allowing for user interaction and input to complete a task. Cadence step flows are a type of screen flow designed for use as cadence steps in Sales Engagement.
Cadence step flows launch as a step in the cadence, right from the Work Queue or To Do List. Reps interact with screen flow cadence steps just like any action step type. The custom screen flow appears, allowing them to provide any needed input. Admins create cadence step flows and then activate those flows for cadence builders to include as cadence steps. See Flow Types.
Sales Engagement includes three sample screen flow templates that you can clone and customize for your cadences.
- Create a Case
- Create a Task
- Create an Event
To use cadence step flows to manage cadences, such as adding or removing targets or changing target assignees, use the built-in actions included with Sales Engagement when building your flows.
- Create a case.
- Create a task.
- Create an event.
- Send a text message through Digital Engagement.
Cadence Autolaunched Flows
Cadence autolaunched flows are a type of autolaunched flow designed for use with Sales Engagement. Autolaunched flows can be configured to launch with no trigger, a schedule trigger, or a record trigger. Cadence autolaunched flows trigger when a target completes an action step in a cadence, such as an email, custom step, call, LinkedIn, or screen flow step.
Admins create cadence autolaunched flows that cadence builders can then add to individual cadence steps. You can create these flows from the included cadence autolaunched flow templates or create custom flows from scratch. For more information, see Flow Types.
Sales Engagement includes three sample cadence autolaunched flow templates that you can clone and customize.
- Update Lead Path
- Update Opportunity Stage
- Update Contact Owner
To use cadence autolaunched flows to manage cadences, such as adding or removing targets or changing target assignees, use the built-in actions included with Sales Engagement when building your flows.
- When a call step is completed, update the lead path to contacted.
- When an email step is completed, update the opportunity stage to qualification.
- When a custom step is completed, update the contact or account owner to the cadence assignee.
- When a LinkedIn step is completed, change the cadence assignee to the rep who will continue the outreach.
- When a screen flow step is completed, change the cadence assignee to the rep who will continue the outreach.
Custom Automation with Platform Tools
Salesforce provides additional platform tools to give you the ability to customize your Sales Engagement automations.
Before you decide to use platform tools for custom development, review the information about Automated Actions to confirm whether those options can be applied to your use case.
- Flow Builder
- Use Flow Builder to add process automation and build individual flows using code-like
logic without using a programming language.
One way to create flows in Flow Builder is to use standard autolaunched flows. Most features in Salesforce use the standard autolaunched flow type, including Sales Engagement. This flow type also can execute automatically to perform common tasks. Standard autolaunched flows can run based on schedule triggers, record triggers, or other background processes.
Sales Engagement includes three sample Standard Autolaunched Flow templates that you can clone and customize.
- Add Lead to Cadence
- Remove Lead from Cadence on Opt-Out
- Remove Unqualified Lead
For more information, see Flow Types.
To use Flow Builder to manage cadences, such as adding or removing targets or changing target assignees, use the built-in actions included with Sales Engagement when building your flows.
- Apex and APIs
- If the flow templates included with Sales Engagement don’t meet your specific business
process requirements, use the flow tools directly to create the custom flow automations
you need.
If the flow templates included with Sales Engagement don’t meet your specific business process requirements, use the flow tools directly to create the custom flow automations you need.
You can also use these tools independently from building cadences, to maximize the flexibility and customization of your flows and automate exactly what you need. In Sales Engagement, these tools can interact with cadences but aren’t necessarily tied to a cadence. Cadence step flows and cadence autolaunched flows are tied to cadences.
- Use Apex if you’re a developer who can use this object-oriented programming language to execute complex flow and transaction control statements on the Lightning Platform in conjunction with calls to the Lightning Platform API. Add business logic to most system events, including button clicks, related record updates, and Visualforce pages. Initiate Apex code by Web service requests and from triggers on objects.
- Use Salesforce APIs when you want other applications (or code in other applications) to programmatically access data in a simple and secure manner. For more information, see Cadence Object Reference.
Note You can only use code to write Lightning components.To use Apex and APIs to manage cadences, such as adding or removing targets or changing target assignees, use the built-in actions included with Sales Engagement when building your flows.
Here are some options for triggering standard autolaunched flows to perform cadence actions.
- When a lead is created, add the lead to a cadence. For example, a Follow Up on Interested Prospects cadence.
- When a contact has opted out of email, remove the lead from one or more cadences.
- When a lead is marked as unqualified, remove the lead from one or more cadences.
- When an opportunity is lost, add the primary contact to a cadence, such as a Recover a Lost Opportunity cadence.
- When a case is closed, add the primary contact to a cadence.
- When a contact is added to a product-specific campaign, assign the contact to a product-specific cadence.
- When a contact is assigned as an opportunity contact role, add the contact to an opportunity maturation cadence with the opportunity attributed to the cadence target.
Here’s a method of using a custom standard screen flow with cadences.
- Build a standard screen flow and add it to the layout of an account page.
- On the first screen, list only contacts that have the title of Decision Maker. Allow the user to select those contacts to add to one or more cadences.
- On the second screen, list the relevant cadences, allow the user to select one or more cadences, and add a button that the user can click to add to cadence.
For more complex cadence routing logic, consider creating a custom object that contains fields representing business logic and a corresponding cadence, as in this example.
- Object Name = Cadence Routing Rules
- Example Rule Field Values: Lead Source = Website, Cadence = Website Welcome Cadence
- Build a trigger or record-triggered flow that executes on lead insert, reads the values from the Cadence Routing Rules object, and compares them to the values on the inserted lead.
- When a match is found and the lead isn’t assigned to the maximum number of cadences, add to the specified cadence.
Change Data Capture
Using Change Data Capture with Sales Engagement lets you trigger automation on changes to records. For example, you can trigger when a cadence target progresses to the next step in a cadence, which updates its associated action cadence tracker record. Change events can include but aren’t limited to a target being added to a cadence, completing a cadence, beginning a step, or completing a step.
To implement automation for only one or a few cadences, or you don’t want to develop a custom solution, consider using cadence autolaunched flows instead. Consider using Change Data Capture only if a cadence autolaunched flows solution can’t satisfy your business requirements. Development effort is required to implement a Change Data Capture solution.
These use cases require a Change Data Capture solution.
- Triggering at the start or end of a cadence
- Triggering at the start of a step rather than the completion of a step, which is supported by cadence autolaunched flows
- Implementing a global automation solution across multiple cadences
While you can accomplish after-step triggering by individually configuring each step, if your requirement applies to multiple cadences, consider a global solution rather than ensuring each step is properly configured. For more information, see Salesforce Developers: Change Data Capture Developer Guide and Sales Engagement Developer Guide.
To use change data capture to manage cadences, such as adding or removing targets or changing target assignees, use the built-in actions included with Sales Engagement when building your flows.
These cadence solutions are created with Change Data Capture.
- When a lead is assigned to a cadence (cadence starts), update a field on the lead.
- When a contact moves down the yes path on a listener step in a cadence (step starts), update a field on the contact.
These Change Data Capture solutions affect multiple cadences.
- When every cadence starts, update a field on the corresponding target.
- When every cadence ends, update a field on the corresponding target.*
- After every intro call step is completed, update the lead status to working.*
* You can use cadence autolaunched flows if you want a cadence-specific solution instead of affecting all cadences.
