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Saturday 11 May 2024

Formatted Output from Copilot Custom Actions


Image generated by DALL-E 3 based on a prompt from Bob Buzzard

Introduction

If you've seen any of the demos of Einstein Copilot, you'll notice that sometimes the responses are nicely formatted using the Lightning Design System, while other times they are simply text on a darker background - e.g. from the TrailblazerDX keynote, the pipeline information is text:


While the contacts are shown as a formatted list, with fields specific to the solution:


This isn't particularly well documented, so it's a matter of trial and error to figure out what works and what doesn't.

Text Responses

Text responses came out the same regardless of what I tried - the text that I return appears on a dark background. If I format it as JSON or CSV, it comes out in JSON or CSV format, even if I included instructions to display as a list of label/value pairs. 

The same goes for HTML markup - it's taken as text and shown to the user. Using \n for a line break works, but aside from that what you return from your custom action is what you see on the screen.

Custom Class

Returning custom class instances introduce a little more formatting. You can only return a single "value" from your custom action, but this can contain a list of custom class instances and Copilot will render each of the properties in it's own "text box". In the example below I return a single instance of my custom class Output, but this contains a list of instances another custom class. These in turn which contain the fields from Task records (as using the Tasks directly throws errors) : 

public class Output
{
    @InvocableVariable
    public List<CustomRec> recs;
}

public class CustomRec
{
    @InvocableVariable
    public String ident;
        
    @InvocableVariable
    public String subject;
        
    @InvocableVariable
    public String description;
        
    @InvocableVariable
    public String activityDate;

    public CustomRec(Task task)
    {
        this.ident=(null!=task.id?'ID : ' + task.Id:null);
        this.subject=(null!=task.Subject?'Subject: ' + task.Subject:null);
        this.description=(null!=task.Description?'Description :\n' + task.Description:null);
        this.activityDate=(null!=task.activityDate?'Due Date : ' + task.activityDate:null);
    }
}

Copilot displays the properties from each record, although there isn't any separation between records. There's also a wrinkle in there I wasn't expecting - the properties are displayed in alphabetical order : activityDate, description, ident, subject. While unexpected, this does give me a way to order the properties if I need to:


sObject Records

As before, I can only return a single item from a custom action, so if I want to send back a list of records I have to wrap them in an containing class: 

public class Output
{
    @InvocableVariable
    public List<Opportunity> opportunities;

    public Output()
    {
        opportunities=new List<Opportunity>();
    }
}

And this comes out very nicely, with a card for each record:


sObject Records and more!

This is the one that I'm most pleased about - it allows me to display records and some commentary about each record, while still retaining the Lightning Design System formatting for the record itself.

Once again I'm returning a custom class containing a list of other custom classes, but this time it's a wrapper class containing an sObject record and some additional information: 

public class Output
{
    @InvocableVariable
    public List<OpportunityWrapper> opportunities;

    public Output()
    {
        opportunities=new List<OpportunityWrapper>();
    }
}

public class OpportunityWrapper
{
    @InvocableVariable
    public Opportunity opp;

    @InvocableVariable
    public String message;

    @InvocableVariable
    public String trailer;
        
    @InvocableVariable
    public String zzzSeparator='-----------------------------';

    public OpportunityWrapper(Opportunity opp, String message, String trailer)
    {
        this.opp=opp;
        this.message=message;
        this.trailer=trailer;
    }
}

I really didn't expect this to work, but it did!


I've taken advantage of the fact that the properties are displayed in alphabetical order to display a message about how near the close date is, then the record, then some commission information, followed by a rather ugly separator. I think if I was going to use this in production I'd have all the message above or below the record so that I didn't have to put a clunky separator in, but I wanted to see if I above and below would work.

Conclusion

I don't think this is too bad, given that Copilot is at its heart a text based tool. Hopefully in time we'll be able to apply more formatting to text output, but at least sObject records are styled for the Lightning Experience. Worst case, we all end up polluting our Salesforce org with a bunch of fake records that are just used as carriers for Copilot responses! 

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