Trigger Salesforce Assignment Rules And Send Notifications From MuleSoft

Author: Ujala Kumar Yadav

In many MuleSoft integration projects, there is a requirement to create lead or case records in Salesforce. Organizations typically use lead assignment rules and case assignment rules to automatically assign new leads or cases to users or queues.

When we create leads or cases from MuleSoft using the Salesforce connector, by default it does not trigger the assignment rules and does not send email notifications to owners.

This blog will describe the process of triggering Salesforce lead or case assignment rules and sending email notifications to owners when creating records from MuleSoft. We will assume that the Salesforce assignment rules are already set up to be triggered when creating leads or cases from the Salesforce UI. Our focus will be on triggering assignment rules in Salesforce when creating a new lead or case from MuleSoft. This blog will not cover how to create assignment rules in Salesforce.

Background:

Salesforce Assignment Rules: Assignment rules in Salesforce are used to automatically assign leads or cases to an owner (user or queue).

Salesforce provides two types of assignment rules:

1. Lead Assignment Rule:  This is used to specify how leads are assigned to users or queues.
2. Case Assignment Rule: This is used to determine how cases are assigned to users or put into queues.

When a new lead or case is created it triggers the assignment rule as well as sends the notification email to the assignee if the send email checkbox is enabled. For example: In the below screenshot, you can see two lead assignment rules. One is default and the other is a custom rule (Mule Assignment Rule) created for this blog. Please note that at a time only one assignment rule can be active.

Mule Assignment Rule: In this rule, leads are assigned to the owners based on the condition for Lead:Country and after that email notifications are sent to those owners as send Email checkbox is true.

To know more about the Salesforce assignment rules you can refer here: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sf.customize_leadrules.htm&type=5

Solution:

AssignmentRuleHeader: To trigger the assignment rule from MuleSoft, AssignmentRuleHeader must be specified in the Salesforce connector for the specified assignment rule to be triggered. We can specify two types of AssignmentRuleHeader.

1. useDefaultRule: This is a boolean type and it should be set to true. This triggers the default (active) assignment rule. If this is specified, do not specify an assignmentRuleId.
2. assignmentRuleId: In this type we can pass the ID of a specific assignment rule to run for the Case or Lead. The Lead or Case assignment rule can be active or inactive. The Assignment rule ID can be fetched by querying the AssignmentRule object. If this is specified, do not specify useDefaultRule.

EmailHeader: To send email notifications to the lead or case owner as part of the assignment rule, an ‘EmailHeader’ with ‘triggerUserEmail’ set to ‘true’ should be passed in the Salesforce connector.

Walkthrough:

For the demo we will be considering a use case where leads are created in Salesforce using MuleSoft. We will be using the previously mentioned ‘Mule Assignment Rule’ which assigns leads to owners based on the lead country value and sends email notification.

Step 1: Add a Mule Flow with below connectors to create leads in Salesforce.

Step 2: In the salesforceHeaders variable, set the AssignmentRuleHeader and EmailHeader with below syntax:

%dw 2.0
output application/java
---
{
	"AssignmentRuleHeader": {
		"useDefaultRule": true
	},
	"EmailHeader": {
		"triggerUserEmail": true
	}
}

Here, we are using the useDefaultRule option which will trigger the default active lead assignment rule.

If your requirement is to trigger a specific assignment rule, we can specify the assignmentRuleId:

%dw 2.0
output application/java
---
{
	"AssignmentRuleHeader": {
		"assignmentRuleId": "01Q5j000000p4xaEAA"
	},
	"EmailHeader": {
		"triggerUserEmail": true
	}
}

You can get the assignmentRuleId by running SOQL: SELECT id FROM AssignmentRule WHERE Name = ‘Mule Assignment Rule’

Please note that we need to pass both the headers to trigger the assignment rule and send notifications. If the requirement is to only trigger the assignment and not send email, you can skip the EmailHeader. But if email notification is needed you need to mandatorily add the EmailHeader else if will not send email even if the send email checkbox is true in assignment rule.

Step 3: Add the Salesforce transformation in Transform Message.

%dw 2.0
output application/java
---
[
	{
		"FirstName": "John",
		"LastName": "Doe",
		"Company": "XYZ Company",
		"Phone": "0123456789",
		"Email": "john-doe@xyzcompany.com",
		"Status": "Open - Not Contacted",
		"Street": "1, Main Street",
		"City": "New York City",
		"State": "NY",
		"Country": "US",
		"PostalCode": "10001"
		
	}
]

Please note that we are creating this lead with country = ‘US’ which will satisfy the first assignment rule condition and should assign this lead to ‘Mule Max’.

Step 4: Pass the salesforceHeaders variable in the headers section of Salesforce connector.

Step 5: Run the application and trigger the request.

Validation:

1. Lead Assigned: Lead is created in Salesforce and it is assigned to ‘Mule Max’ as per the lead assignment rule.

2. Email Sent: Email is triggered to the Lead owner as per the lead assignment rule.

Email format can be different based on the email template used in the Salesforce assignment rule.

Note: If you are using the Salesforce Sandbox environment, it may not trigger the email notification because by default the send email access is disabled in Sandbox. To enable the send email access go to the email deliverability setting in Salesforce setup and change the Access level to All Email.

Summary:

We have covered how to trigger the Salesforce lead assignment rule and send email notifications to the lead owners when creating new leads from MuleSoft. The same process can be used for the case assignment rules.

References:

https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?language=en_US&id=sf.customize_leadrules.htm&type=5

https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.api.meta/api/sforce_api_header_assignmentruleheader.htm?search_text=AssignmentRuleHeader

https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.api.meta/api/sforce_api_header_emailheader.htm?search_text=AssignmentRuleHeader