Admin to Product Manager with Scott Kozinchik

Today on the Salesforce Admin Podcast we’re speaking to Scott Kozinchik, a Senior Product Manager at Salesforce. Scott works on some of the most popular admin tools like Flow and Process Builder. He’s excited to share his Flow and Process Builder wisdom, along with some helpful tips on how admins can be successful at using both.

Join us as Scott shares his journey from admin to Product Manager and what it’s like working on the Flow and Process Builder team. We learn the difference between Flow and Process Builder. We also get insight into why Scott loves Reusable Processes and what makes his job as a Product Manager so exciting.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Scott Kozinchik.

Process Builder makes data manipulation easy.

Scott started his Salesforce career as an admin in 2007. As Scott says, “I love Salesforce for the power it gives to the every person.”

However, when asked what aspect was hardest for him to pick up, he shares, “Rules and Permissions and Profiles. It took a long time for me to figure these out because they were spread all over the platform. I also didn’t understand how to use a Lead Object. I didn’t understand the difference between a Lead and an Account. There wasn’t a lot of prescriptive guidance on that. That’s changed.”

Moving to Process Builder has been a positive step forward. “It’s a fantastic, simple UI that lets you hook onto changes that happen on any of the objects in Salesforce and take subsequent actions and build out these beautiful ‘if this then that’ formulas while controlling the automatic data manipulation within your org,” says Scott.

Processes are really flows under the hood

“Process Builder is built on Lightning. It’s a fantastic example of what can be built on Lightning,” says Scott.

As he explains, whereas “Lightning was more created to render information and get your users interacting with your data, Process Builder is more a structured tool. Ultimately what Process Builder does is that it creates metadata that drives the Flow engine in exactly the same way that the Flow engine creates metadata that drives the Flow engine.”

As Scott explains, “Processes are really flows under the hood. To our advanced admins and admins that cross over to the developer realm, they can actually put that metadata into the engine directly through the API.”

Build screens with Flow

The Flow component now allows admins to use Flow like never before. “The actual difference between Process Builder and Flow is that the Flow Designer allows you to build actual screens,” says Scott.

This is one of the reasons Flow is so exciting. “You can build interfaces. You can collect information from your users and dynamically render new information to them in screens. Historically those have always been standalone, but now Lightning Application Builder has really changed the game, and you can now combine multiple components. Those Flow screens can be part of that,” says Scott.

Reusable processes save time and energy.

One of Scott’s favorite features? Reusable processes. As he shares, “reusable processes are really cool. Especially for people who are more developer minded and they don’t want to do things over and over again.”

So, what exactly makes Reusable Processes so handy? As Scott says, “you can take chunks of your processes that get used by other processes and create something called an Invocable Process. Then, in Process Builder, instead of making that series of actions, something you have to reauthor in all of your processes, you just call the Invocable Process. That’s reusable and compartmentalized.”

Product Managers are advocates for other departments.

If he had to choose one aspect of his job that’s his favorite, Scott says, “the diversity of people I get to work with. I get to work with designers and I get to work with developers. I get to work with doc writers, marketers, the sales folks and we are one of the groups of people that get to interface the most with customers.”

In order to be successful, Scott says it’s important to keep in mind, “when talking to any one of those categories, you’re advocating for all of the others.”

When asked what advice he’d give a newbie admin who has never built a process, Scott says, “the hardest thing isn’t using the software tool, it’s understanding your business process. Spend time thinking about what you’re trying to accomplish. What outcome do you want to achieve? What knowns and unknowns are you working with? Then map it out. Once you’ve done that, the processes and flows will fall out from the upfront work you’ve done,” says Scott.

For more insights, make sure to follow Scott Kozinchik on Twitter (@scottkozy_sfdc).

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