Customised and reusable patterns for Salesforce in Life Sciences

Bespoke approaches and patterns for Salesforce Life Sciences projects

Salesforce Platform enables to creation of plenty of tailor-made applications fully addressing the organisation’s use cases. The one we created is dedicated to supporting the approval process in the Life Science sector. The business goal of this tool is to enable smoothly running acceptance processes in practically any function, from covering a legal process of a new agreement review to ordering complex counterparts for specific scientific equipment.

So what does a technical “base” of the tool look like, and how does it work? Its “heart” is a builder that we describe below. The tool is 100% based on the SFDC standard, with extensive use of Lightning Web Component and Elastic Services (the newest Salesforce feature to overcome Apex limits).

Builder consists of three parts:

Toolbox – Contains a list of available components.
Form builder – interactive form preview.
Properties – properties of the selected component.

Allows you to construct complex forms. Each line of the form can consist of up to three columns. The view is fully responsive and automatically adjusts to the type of device used. Using the drag & drop technique, you can drag components available in the toolbox into the form fields.
The elements available in the toolbox are divided into groups:
- Basic fields
  Standard Lightning Web Components.
- Advanced fields
  Extensive components extending the possibilities of building forms.
- Containers
  They allow you to group and nest items on the form.
- Elements’ view
  They let you draw lines and insert empty areas that separate elements and sections.
Each element is described with a set of configurable properties. In the builder, it is possible to set basic properties such as a label, help text or a default value and advanced properties such as an object and a field, after which you can search for records for lookup fields. For tables, indicate columns and their widths, you can also define the maximum number of rows.

Elements are generic and interactive. Generality makes it possible to extend the configuration with new properties. Property changes are mapped live in the builder.

Simple dictionaries can be defined using standard layouts.

Dictionaries can also be loaded from excel files. Advanced dictionaries automatically link the value from excel with records existing in the system.

Visibility and required interactions can be configured between all elements on the form.

Configuration example:

IF {Country} EQUALS ‘Poland’ AND {Price} GREATER THAN 0 MAKE
{VAT tax} VISIBLE
{VAT tax} REQUIRED

Interactions can refer to individual elements or to entire sections. They also work inside tables. Their greatest advantage is the “on the fly” operation. Each change of the value affects the structure of the form on an ongoing basis. At the moment of changing the value, elements appear and disappear, go into the read-only mode or change the validation rules.

Advanced elements allow you to create mathematical operations, the values of which are calculated live as soon as the fields are completed.

Configuration example:
{Price} * {Quantity} * {Discount}

In the second part of the builder, it is possible to construct the approval process. Each process can have multiple steps. At each step, the responsible person, the current status and actions related to it are defined. Step transition rules are created from formulas that depend on the values of the fields on the form.

Formula example:

IF {Country} EQUALS ‘Poland’ AND {Price} GREATER THAN 100000
THEN Step ‘Approve By Manager’
ELSE ‘Autoapprove’

You can also define e-mail notifications at every step.