Using Process Builder To Capture Previous Owner On A Record

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I have been seeing this question pop up on the Answers Community over and over again: “How to display the Previous Owner on a record after an ownership change?”. Knowing how versatile the mighty Process Builder is becoming by the day, I decided to give it a shot. And voila, it worked! The same requirement can be accomplished using Workflow Rules but demands a formula field creation which can be avoided if using Process Builder. Please note that you have to be on Enterprise Edition or above in order to use either of these automation tools. Let’s get started with the implementation. I will be creating the Process on the Account object and it can be obviously be applied to any other object in Salesforce:

  1. Create a custom Text field on Account object 

    This field will hold the previous owner of an Account record post ownership change.

    Field Creation
    Field Creation
  2. Create a Process to execute the needed logic

    2a) Choosing the Object and Specifying When to Start the ProcessObject_&_Criteria

    2b) Defining the Criteria for this Action GroupCriteria2
    Note that when you click inside the Field box above, you need to make your selection as shown below:Criteria1

    2c) Adding the Update Records Action as an Immediate Action

    In this step, we will update our Previous Owner field on Account with the needed value by using a formula.

    UR2

    Formula:
    PRIORVALUE([Account].Owner.FirstName ) + " " + PRIORVALUE([Account].Owner.LastName)

    Note that when you click inside the Record Type* box above, you need to make your selection as shown below:

    UR1

    After saving the above, Activate the process. This is what our Process flow diagram looks like:

     

    Full_PB

 

Now go to a test Account record, change the Account Owner and see the magic happen! The Previous Owner field that we created in Step 1 will be populated with the Full Name of the prior owner.

Record
 
In case you are interested in being aware of how the above can be accomplished using a Workflow Rule, you can take a look at Deepak’s solution in the following post on the Answers Community:

https://success.salesforce.com/answers?id=90630000000DNOu

Feel free to share in the comments section any other methods that you have used to meet the above requirement.