Short delayed (asynch) related record updates

Question

I feel like there should be a straightforward answer here, but I'm coming up short...

Trigger event: Account lookup field on Lead(s)/Contact(s) are updated OR a particular Account field is updated

Action: Update specified field on Lead(s)/Contact(s) based on the related Account's field value.

Desired behavior: Asynchronous updates so that the initial DML on Leads/Contacts/Accounts is not affected. (Ideally ~1 min)

Thought process:

• Process Builder: Minimum 1 hr wait
• PB + Flow: Flow runs in user context, will cause permissions exceptions
• PB + Flow + Invocable Apex: Cloud Flow Designer cannot assign collection variables to Apex (see here)

Question(s):

1. Process Builder (immediate action) + Invocable Apex + Queueable: I'm not 100% clear on how PB handles bulk updates. I've noticed in the past that PB will create multiple queued items from a single bulk transaction, so my assumption was that it's separate transactions for each record. Say, for example, I mass update the Account field on 200 Leads, if that satisfies a PB criteria node, is that considered one transaction or 200? If the former, then I'll hit the Queueable limit of 50 per transaction. If the latter, I won't.
2. If it does consider it one transaction, I assume the recommended way to proceed would be through Triggers. But, if there's something better, I'd love to know.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Unfortunately, I believe you'll need a trigger, at least as far as kicking off the process. If you're feeling adventurous, you should be able to call the flow from Apex Code, so at least the main logic is controllable.

trigger on Account (after insert, after update) {
  Account[] records = new Account[0];
  for(Account record: Trigger.new) {
    // Figure out what this means to you
    if(meetsCriteria(record)) { 
      records.add(record);
    }
  }
  if(!records.isEmpty()) {
    System.enqueueJob(FlowCaller(records));
  }
}

---

public class FlowCaller implements Queueable {
  Account[] records;
  public FlowCaller(Account[] records) {
    this.records = records;
  }
  public void execute(QueueableContext context) {
    Map<String, Object> params = new Map<String, Object> {
      'accounts' => records // accounts is flow sobject collection
    }; 
    Flow.interview.DoSomethingCool theFlow = 
      new Flow.Interview.DoSomethingCool(params);
    theFlow.start();
  }
}

Note that Queueable is your best choice here, but it won't be a minute delay, it'll be something more like 0-15 seconds (on average), depending on system load. It will be in a separate transaction, though (asynchronously), which is your goal.

You could even have two flows; the first could be invoked in your trigger to determine the matching criteria (it would return a list of records to evaluate), and the second to do the logic of actually updating records.