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Automate Updates with Workflow Rules in Salesforce to Salesforce

You can use workflow rules to automate updates to records and connections in Salesforce to Salesforce. You can use workflows for many processes, including updating values on picklists when a connection edits the field. If your organization is set up to automatically accept records, workflow rules are triggered by any field you subscribed to.

Required Editions

Tip
Tip You can also use Process Builder to automate your processes. If you want your process to perform an action after you create an S2S record, make sure to create a scheduled action rather than an immediate action to allow S2S time to process the created records. Immediate actions fire before shared record connection IDs are updated, resulting in shared records with no connection IDs. Updates to records without connection IDs cannot reach the subscribing system.
Available in: Salesforce Classic

Available in: Contact Manager, Group, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions

Workflow is available in: Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions

Important
Important Salesforce to Salesforce is scheduled for retirement as of Spring ’27. See Salesforce to Salesforce Retirement.

Workflow rules are only triggered for records shared in Salesforce to Salesforce when you accept a parent record, a child record is inserted, or you are subscribed to the fields that are configured to trigger the workflow rules

Some suggestions for criteria for workflow rules for Salesforce to Salesforce include:

  • Received Connection Name field on leads, opportunities, and custom objects
  • Current User equals pnet
  • Last Modified By field equals Connection User

For example, you can create a task for a user every time a connected organization updates a lead. Create a workflow rule with specific criteria, then add a workflow task.

  • Evaluation criteria: Evaluate the rule when a record is: created, and every time it’s edited
  • Run the rule when criteria are met.
  • Rule criteria: “Lead: Last Modified By equals Connection User”.

When you accept a record, only certain fields trigger workflow rules.

Object Fields Triggering Workflows
Account
  • Account Name
  • City
  • Country
  • Received Connection Name
  • Sent Connection Name
  • State
  • Type
Case
  • Case Number
  • Priority
  • Status
  • Subject
  • Type
Contact
  • Email
  • Last Name
  • Mailing Address
  • Phone
  • Title
Lead
  • Company
  • Email
  • Industry
  • Lead
  • Lead Source
  • Name
  • No. of Employees
  • Phone
  • Received Connection Name
  • Sent Connection Name
  • State
  • Status
  • Title
Opportunity
  • Account Name
  • Amount
  • Close Date
  • Name
  • Received Connection Name
  • Sent Connection Name
  • Stage
Custom Object
  • Connection Name
  • Name
  • Sent Date

Sometimes it makes sense to use an Apex trigger instead of a workflow. Suppose that you have a workflow rule that updates field B when field A is updated. Even if your Salesforce to Salesforce partner subscribed to fields A and B, updates to field B that are triggered by your workflow rule aren’t sent to your partner’s organization. This prevents a loop of updates.

If you want such secondary field updates to be sent to your Salesforce to Salesforce partners, replace the workflow with an Apex trigger that uses post-commit logic to update the secondary field.

In bi-directional connections, Salesforce to Salesforce updates are triggered back only on “after” triggers (for example, “after insert” or “after update”), not on “before” triggers.