Author: Bhavya Chanan & Sanjeevani Shukla
Omnistudio, formerly known as Vlocity, is a drag and drop based tool which enables users to create business-specific flows of actions and implement complex logics without writing custom code. Omnistudio is basically part of Einstein Automate. It is built on the WYSIWYG model ie What you see is what you get. It is so because developers can preview every functionality they add and debug without having to actually deploy it.
Setup
There are some typical steps to be followed in order to use omnistudio as there is no option to install it directly in your developer org. But Salesforce provides an efficient option to start with omnistudio development. Here’s how you can setup you own Omnistudio Enabled Developer Org:
1. Click on the below link to start with the process-
Trailhead | Promo Org Signup (salesforce.com)
2. Fill out the details in the form by entering a valid email address and username which should be in the email id format but not necessarily a valid email id.
3. Click Sign me up and you will receive a confirmation message.
4. You will receive the activation email within 10 minutes. Click on Verify Account.
5. Set up your password and security challenge question. Your Omnistudio Enabled Org is ready to be put to use.
Once your org is set and you are logged in , search for Omnistudio.
Architecture
Similar to other applications, Omnistudio also provides 3 layers to build an application:
- Digital Experience — Front End
- Service Management — Back End
- Developer Experience — Deployment
Now let’s learn about these layers in depth.
1. Digital Experience:
As the name suggests, this is the UI layer of omnistudio. Any data which
is to be visualized is fed to this layer and various components support efficient presentation of that data to the end user. Be it text boxes, editable blocks, datatables.
Now there are 2 components of this layer which make all of this possible — Flexcards and Omniscripts.
However, Omniscripts can be described as more of a sequence of guided steps configured to accomplish a business requirement.
Flexcards –
Flexcards are simple card-like structures which show contextual data. It essentially takes a single data source. Being part of digital experience , they emphasize on what users can see , be it on community pages or lightning pages. Flex cards once activated and published ,are typical lightning web components which can be added to Salesforce pages. After being created , they are configured and styled and can be previewed and tested at any stage.
Omniscripts –
Omniscript is the part of the digital experience which includes the front end feature of Omnistudio with more power than a flex card. The bigger problem with flexcards is that they cannot work with inputs.
Omniscripts on the other hand can not only take inputs, but we can also add multiple steps inside an omniscript. We can create a full-fledged form using an Omniscript.You can build login pages, registration pages and complete wizards using omnipscript.
Thus omniscript is used for inputs, and flex-card is used at the front end side to show to outputs.
2. Service Management Layer:
The next layer which we will be dealing with is the service management layer. This is more of a backend layer which does tasks related to retrieval, updation or creation of data in Salesforce as well as other systems. This layer can also perform data manipulations and complex calculations as per business needs.
Two components which comprise this layer are data raptors and integration procedures.
Dataraptors–
Data Raptors in Omnistudio are used to interact with the Salesforce Org. We can insert , update and retrieve data and all other data manipulations in the Salesforce org using the Data Raptors. We can also transform the data using DataRaptors.
Integration Procedures–
In a nutshell, IP is similar to your Apex Class. You can write all kinds of logics, perform calculations, have multiple dataraptors, call out third party APIs, send out emails etc using Integration Procedures. It is the most powerful backend tool for Omnistudio. They are multi-step and multi-action tools. If we talk about Data Raptors , they only return or upsert the data and atmost can transform data. But Integration Procedures being the most powerful backend process in Omnistudio , have the ability to let the user perform multiple actions over the data in a single transaction. Moreover , Integration procedures also process data in chunks and thus they perform batch processing. Also whenever we fetch data from the server , almost all the data is transferred at the client end. But using Integration procedures one can also trim the data before the final call.
3. Developer Experience:
The Developer Experience layer comes into picture when we are to deploy our components into production and various other systems. Two tools that come handy for this purpose are IDX-Build Tool and IDX-Workbench.
Idx Build Tool is used for migrating OmniStudio Datapacks . It provides a command line interaction which automates the process of packaging and migrating datapacks in a hassle-free manner.
On the other hand, whenever the developers need to migrate and transfer datapacks and metadata in Salesforce between different orgs or to a git repository , IDX Workbench comes to the rescue. It again eases all the integration and processes and makes the migration easier through the application.
