Rollups are often necessary to get data on Objects or to build reports, but there are several limitations.
One of the biggest obstacles is that standard rollups can only be used between Objects with a Master-Detail relationship. This results in Admins turning to other tools to create rollups when they are between Objects with a Lookup relationship, or even when they need to create hierarchy rollups within the same Object. Users can be tempted to create these rollups with Flow, but as we describe further, there are limitations in Flow. Our AppExchange app, Rollup Helper, offers significant advantages over Flow as it is a tool purposely built to create and manage all your rollup needs.
|
Rollup Helper |
Flow |
Rollup fields between Objects that can have a Lookup relationship |
✓ |
✓ |
Hierarchy rollups within the same Object |
✓ |
✓ |
Priority support |
✓ |
|
Easy to use |
✓ |
|
Free |
First three rollups |
✓ |
Native App |
✓ |
✓ |
Error Handling |
||
Health Check page to flag potential issues |
✓ |
|
Automatically create exception records without having to create and maintain a custom Object |
✓ |
|
Retry functionality |
✓ |
|
Automatically disable settings when an error is encountered |
✓ |
|
Run frequencies |
||
Manual run |
✓ |
One flow to run manually, and a second flow to set a schedule |
Every 5 Minutes |
✓ |
|
Daily |
✓ |
✓ |
Hourly |
✓ |
|
Monthly |
✓ |
✓ |
Yearly |
✓ |
|
Flow can be difficult to learn, but even if you're a Flow master there are still benefits to using an app like Rollup Helper for rollups. It's easier to organize all of your rollups in one place, and there's less to manage, e.g., there's only one setting per rollup instead of two flows. Flows have their place, but we recommend saving yourself time and effort by only building them when you really need them. For example, when you have rollups that are bundled with other declarative processes.