Making automation workflows easily accessible for collaboration & documentation (Academic Project)
Designed features for making it easier for Salesforce Admins to create, modify and share simple versions of their automation workflows with other stakeholders.
Role
Lead Interaction Designer in a team of 7 Designers
Duration
4 Months, From Aug'24 to Dec'24 (Very recent project)
Duration
4 Months, From Aug'24 to Dec'24 (Very recent project)
Problems in the Current Scenario of automation building
is a collaborative process in which Salesforce Admins work with various stakeholders to create and refine workflows. To facilitate this collaboration, admins often recreate simplified versions of workflows in tools like Lucid or Miro. These diagrams are then shared with stakeholders via Zoom calls, Slack, or email to gather feedback.
This current process can be very tedious for admins as -
Significant time spent recreating flows
"I find it tedious to spend hours manually recreating automation flows, taking time away from building and optimizing them." ~ Salesforce Admin
Automation building
Feedback scattered across platforms
"I juggle communication across Slack, Teams, email, and diagramming tools. It’s hard to keep track of feedback and changes when everything is so scattered." ~ Salesforce AdminMaintaining consistency across simplified flows
"We replicate visuals in Lucidchart to simplify workflows for stakeholders, but keeping them aligned and consistent takes extra effort."~ Salesforce Admin
Pain Points in current state
Making it easy for Salesforce Admins to create and share simple versions of flow is the biggest challenge we want to solve
Feature 1 : Generating Simple Diagrams & summary on button click
Problem
Admins recreate automation workflows in tools like Lucidchart or Miro to help stakeholder provide critical feedback, but this is time-intensive.
Recreated diagrams are used for documentation to assist other admins and as a memory aid, but they lack consistency, causing inefficiencies.
non technical
Solution
Generate Simple Diagram Button: Quickly creates clear and consistent diagrams, saving admins time and ensuring uniformity across projects.
AI Summary: Provides a short explanation of the workflow, helping stakeholders understand and giving admins a quick reference.
Proposed design - Generating Simple Diagrams & Summary on a button click
Generating Simple Diagrams & Summary on button
This is the prototype we made to better understand the interaction.
Gif of Proposed design -Generating Simple Diagrams & Summary on button
Rationale behind the multiple tabs interaction
Multiple Tab interaction makes the design effortless. It enables creating multiple simple diagram and sharing singular view with stakeholders without things becoming too complicated. I did explore toggle and single tab interaction but that led to complexities including
version control.
Why Flowchart?
Flow chart can be easily understood by non-technical users. Making it better for collaboration and feedback sessions.
Feature 2 : Sharing the Simple Diagram
Problem
Lack of Collaboration Features: Admins rely on platforms like Slack, email, and Zoom to gather stakeholder feedback, making it scattered and hard to manage.
Frustration in Consolidation: Searching for specific feedback is time-consuming and frustrating, slowing down their workflow.
Solution
Diagram Sharing and Feedback: Added a feature to share simple diagrams with stakeholders, allowing them to comment directly, similar to collaboration tools like Figma.
Centralized Feedback: Consolidates all feedback on the diagram itself, simplifying the process for admins and reducing the need to track feedback across multiple platforms.
Proposed design - Sharing the simple diagram
Feature 3 : Editing and Annotating the simple diagrams
Problem
Live Edits During Collaboration: Admins often modify diagrams or add text while collaborating with stakeholders during calls.
Note-Taking for Memory Refresh: Admins add personal notes as reminders to help them recall details later.
Solution
Diagram Modification: Admins can edit the diagram by adding shapes, connectors, or text directly.
Note-Taking Features: Includes options to add sticky notes or text on the simple diagram for better collaboration and reminders.
Proposed design - Editing and annotating the diagram
Overview of the research
We conducted user research through semi-structured interviews with 6 Salesforce admins and digital ethnography on platforms like Reddit and Salesforce Exchange.
The user studies were the largest part of the project, where we created a protocol to gather feedback on several key topics, including the phases of automation building, pain points in collaboration, and challenges in documentation.
This research helped identify the core issues faced by admins, guiding the development of our solution.
Themes identified from research
Through research we discovered multiple themes & pain points but we focussed on the problem with maximum value to admins
Challenges faced
No Domain Knowledge: This was a new domain for our team, and the biggest challenge was accepting the ambiguity of not knowing everything upfront. We spent time familiarizing ourselves with the basics, but ultimately decided to learn more as needed throughout the process.
First-Time Interviews: This project relied heavily on user interviews with professional Salesforce admins. Conducting these interviews effectively and extracting maximum value from them proved challenging, as it was our first time engaging with such a specific user group.
Adapting to Feedback: As we gathered feedback from the interviews, we had to adjust our approach frequently. Users provided diverse perspectives, and we had to prioritize their concerns while ensuring the solution addressed the most common pain points.
Impact
We conducted feedback session with Salesforce Admins where we showed them the designs and gathered their feedback. They were quite happy with the outcome of the project. In their own words -
"The last flow I built on my last project had closer to 300 elements. So like that was way too complicated for me to be able to provide for the client as documentation. So being able to just spit out from that, like. give me the simple version of this" ~Salesforce Admin
"Being able to have something like this that I could export and show my clients the high level would be helpful" ~Salesforce Admin
"And for someone who doesn't know how to read a technical flow. This can feel less intimidating and more accessible" ~Salesforce Admin
This is a glimpse of the feedback/critique session with users. The feedback session was conducted on wireframes and then on the final designs.
Feedback session with stakeholders
Wireframing
We created multiple versions from very low-fidelity designs to hi-fidelity designs. Low fidelity designs helped us explore and were also better for feedback from stakeholders.
Also read…
Making automation workflows easily accessible for collaboration & documentation
(Academic Project)
Designed features for making it easier for Salesforce Admins to create, modify and share simple versions of their automation workflows with other stakeholders.
Role
Lead Interaction Designer in a team of 7 Designers
Duration
4 Months, From Aug'24 to Dec'24 (Very recent project)
Problems in the Current Scenario of automation building
is a collaborative process in which Salesforce Admins work with various stakeholders to create and refine workflows. To facilitate this collaboration, admins often recreate simplified versions of workflows in tools like Lucid or Miro. These diagrams are then shared with stakeholders via Zoom calls, Slack, or email to gather feedback.
This current process can be very tedious for admins as -
Significant time spent recreating flows
"I find it tedious to spend hours manually recreating automation flows, taking time away from building and optimizing them." ~ Salesforce Admin
Automation building
Feedback scattered across platforms
"I juggle communication across Slack, Teams, email, and diagramming tools. It’s hard to keep track of feedback and changes when everything is so scattered." ~ Salesforce AdminMaintaining consistency across simplified flows
"We replicate visuals in Lucidchart to simplify workflows for stakeholders, but keeping them aligned and consistent takes extra effort."~ Salesforce Admin
Pain Points in current state
Making it easy for Salesforce Admins to create and share simple versions of flow is the biggest challenge we want to solve
Proposed design - Generating Simple Diagrams & Summary on a button click
Feature 1 : Generating Simple Diagrams & summary on button click
Problem
Admins recreate automation workflows in tools like Lucidchart or Miro to help provide critical feedback, but this is time-intensive.
Recreated diagrams are used for documentation to assist other admins and as a memory aid, but they lack consistency, causing inefficiencies.
non-technical stakeholders
Solution
Generate Simple Diagram Button: Quickly creates clear and consistent diagrams, saving admins time and ensuring uniformity across projects.
AI Summary: Provides a short explanation of the workflow, helping stakeholders understand and giving admins a quick reference.
Generating Simple Diagrams & Summary on button
This is the prototype we made to better understand the interaction.
Gif of Proposed design -Generating Simple Diagrams & Summary on button
Rationale behind the multiple tabs interaction
Multiple Tab interaction makes the design effortless. It enables creating multiple simple diagram and sharing singular view with stakeholders without things becoming too complicated. I did explore toggle and single tab interaction but that led to complexities including
version control.
Why Flowchart?
Flow chart can be easily understood by non-technical users. Making it better for collaboration and feedback sessions.
Proposed design - Sharing the simple diagram
Problem
Lack of Collaboration Features: Admins rely on platforms like Slack, email, and Zoom to gather stakeholder feedback, making it scattered and hard to manage.
Frustration in Consolidation: Searching for specific feedback is time-consuming and frustrating, slowing down their workflow.
Solution
Diagram Sharing and Feedback: Added a feature to share simple diagrams with stakeholders, allowing them to comment directly, similar to collaboration tools like Figma.
Centralized Feedback: Consolidates all feedback on the diagram itself, simplifying the process for admins and reducing the need to track feedback across multiple platforms.
Feature 2 : Sharing the Simple Diagram
Proposed design - Editing and annotating the diagram
Problem
Live Edits During Collaboration: Admins often modify diagrams or add text while collaborating with stakeholders during calls.
Note-Taking for Memory Refresh: Admins add personal notes as reminders to help them recall details later.
Solution
Diagram Modification: Admins can edit the diagram by adding shapes, connectors, or text directly.
Note-Taking Features: Includes options to add sticky notes or text on the simple diagram for better collaboration and reminders.
Feature 3 : Editing and Annotating the simple diagrams
We conducted user research through semi-structured interviews with 6 Salesforce admins and digital ethnography on platforms like Reddit and Salesforce Exchange. The user studies were the largest part of the project, where we created a protocol to gather feedback on several key topics, including the phases of automation building, pain points in collaboration, and challenges in documentation.
This research helped identify the core issues faced by admins, guiding the development of our solution.
Overview of the research
Themes identified from research
Through research we discovered multiple themes & pain points but we focussed on the problem with maximum value to admins
No Domain Knowledge: This was a new domain for our team, and the biggest challenge was accepting the ambiguity of not knowing everything upfront. We spent time familiarizing ourselves with the basics, but ultimately decided to learn more as needed throughout the process.
First-Time Interviews: This project relied heavily on user interviews with professional Salesforce admins. Conducting these interviews effectively and extracting maximum value from them proved challenging, as it was our first time engaging with such a specific user group.
Adapting to Feedback: As we gathered feedback from the interviews, we had to adjust our approach frequently. Users provided diverse perspectives, and we had to prioritize their concerns while ensuring the solution addressed the most common pain points.
Challenges faced
Impact
We conducted feedback session with Salesforce Admins where we showed them the designs and gathered their feedback. They were quite happy with the outcome of the project. In their own words -
"The last flow I built on my last project had closer to 300 elements. So like that was way too complicated for me to be able to provide for the client as documentation. So being able to just spit out from that, like. give me the simple version of this"
~Salesforce Admin
"Being able to have something like this that I could export and show my clients the high level would be helpful" ~Salesforce Admin
"And for someone who doesn't know how to read a technical flow. This can feel less intimidating and more accessible"
~Salesforce Admin
This is a glimpse of the feedback/critique session with users. The feedback session was conducted on wireframes and then on the final designs.
Feedback session with stakeholders
Wireframing
We created multiple versions from very low-fidelity designs to hi-fidelity designs. Low fidelity designs helped us explore and were also better for feedback from stakeholders.
Also read…
2025, Tanya Bansal