Why ensure formal acknowledgment of new processes?
In regulated industries, ensuring employees understand and follow processes is critical for compliance and operational efficiency.
However, even beyond just meeting regulatory requirements, formal acknowledgment ensures users comprehend complex workflows that span multiple systems. This helps reduce errors and improve accountability.
When employees are required to formally acknowledge processes, it creates a track record that proves they were trained and informed, eliminating excuses and driving consistent performance.
When to request process acknowledgment?
The formal acknowledgment feature is ideal for:
Regulated industries (e.g., finance, healthcare) that require documentation proving employee compliance with processes.
Critical business processes that span multiple systems and teams, such as sales, marketing, or customer service processes.
Complex operational changes, such as new system implementations, role-specific responsibilities, or cross-departmental workflows, where training alone may not be enough.
For example, in a cross-functional process like lead qualification, formal acknowledgment ensures that both marketing and sales teams understand the steps and systems involved in handing off leads, reducing miscommunication and improving lead conversion rates.
Similarly, in case resolution and escalation, acknowledgment guarantees that support agents know exactly how to resolve cases within regulatory guidelines and can be held accountable for following these processes.
For updates and changes that are simple and small in scope, it is better to rely on creating ad-hoc, individual in-app enablement resources.
Prerequisites
In order to follow this guide you need:
Process-led-change product license
Salesforce Metadata Management license
Synced Salesforce Org into Metadata Dictionary
Perform: Publish and Request Process Acknowledgment
Step 1: Document and update the processes in Elements
At this point, you should already have business process diagrams captured in UPN notation. These business process diagrams were captured during analysis and design of your new ways of working. They should be:
Enriched with links and notes for further details
Step 2: Prepare the updated processes for release
When the new processes span multiple systems, or incorporate many, complex flows, you can request that all employees affected by those changes review and acknowledge they have seen and understood the new way of working.
Make sure you have created training groups and associated them with the relevant diagrams in the hierarchy.
Training users on diagrams is tied to Elements diagram versioning lifecycle. Once the To-Be diagram (draft) is finished, you need to update the diagram to 'Ready to publish'. All diagrams that are ready and explain the new way of working should be grouped together into a single 'release'.
First, create a new release in the Elements main application. The navigate to your affected diagrams. Make them ready for release (and all children diagrams automatically). In this scenario, you can skip the authorization stage (more on when to use authorizations here).
Step 3: Request acknowledgment from users
In the release app, select all diagrams for which you want acknowledgment. Upon publishing the release, all affected users will receive a notification within Elements or via email prompting them to review the new process.
The process will be linked in the notification, and users will need to open the process diagram, review the steps, and formally acknowledge that they understand the new way of working. This acknowledgment is captured within Elements, creating a record of compliance and training.
Step 4: Track acknowledgments and follow up
Use the tracking dashboard in Elements to see which users have reviewed and acknowledged the process. The system provides a complete audit trail, ensuring full transparency.
Follow up with any users who have not completed the acknowledgment by the deadline, ensuring that no one misses critical updates or changes.
Step 5: Provide process diagrams as in-app help in Salesforce
Asking users to train and understand the new process is important. However, if this is a one-off, chances are the knowledge will erode over time. Especially when the process explains the new way of working with a complex solution.
To supplement the training, make the process diagrams accessible in Salesforce UI by deploying them as in-app help at the object level.This prevents the documentation from being 'one-time' and instead provides ongoing support, helping users follow the process long after initial acknowledgment.