Process Builder was one of the most awaited features released by Salesforce as an upgrade to the possibilties of the Workflow functionality and as part of its effort to strengthen what can be done declaratively. In Winter 16 Salesforce continues to add further enhancements to the Process Builder.

Schedule Multiple Actions

Prior to the Winter ’16 release, it was only possible to define 1 scheduled action per criteria node or decision box. This meant that you needed multiple processes defined to execute chronologically scheduled actions – like reminder emails or field updates to be sent at different times.

Process Builder multiple scheduled actions

As shown in the example above, a single process can be now be used to schedule 2 reminder emails, as well as update an ‘SLA reached’ marker field.

Another use case for having multiple scheduled actions are to send cascading survey emails, when a Case or Opportunity is closed.

Note that the existing limitations of scheduled actions still apply, and have not changed. Multiple scheduled actions are only available when a process is defined to execute only when an object is created, or only when a field is updated to meet a specified criterion.

Process Builder is Bulkified

While this may not be an enhancement that can be visually identified, Salesforce has enhanced Process Builder under the hood to respect the bulkified design paradigm. This means that Process Builder now handles batch updates to data better, without throwing limit exceptions. It now works to bucket SOQL queries, and process the entire transaction in batches.

This enhancement would allow larger enterprises to adopt process builder without having to worry about impacts from batch DML operations.

Easily Choose to Update the Record that Started the Process

As a usability improvement Salesforce Process Builder now gives you the option to directly choose to update fields on the record that started the process flow. Prior to this release, you needed to explicitly identify this record, but now it is provided as a simple direct option on field update definition screen.

Current Data Leveraged for Scheduled Actions

Potentially, one could use a scheduled action to execute an email notification with merge fields, many days after the process is triggered. Until Winter ’16, Salesforce Process Builder would use the data as it was at the time of process trigger to generate this email.

As of Winter 16, Process Builder schedules actions have been enhanced to ensure the most current data on the record is picked up, when executing the scheduled action. This accounts for cases where the record have been updated since the start of the process, and schedule action occurs later.