Creating a Platform Event through Event Studio is a four-stage flow: design the event shape, register it in the org, configure subscribers, and validate end-to-end. The walkthrough below covers a typical use case where a custom business event needs to trigger downstream Apex and Flow automation plus notify an external system.
- Design the event shape and consumers
Document what the event represents (an Order Shipped event, a Customer Tier Upgraded event), what fields it should carry (the order ID, customer ID, timestamp, any business-relevant data), and what consumers should receive it. Identify which consumers need real-time delivery and which can tolerate slight latency. Confirm the event is not better served by a Change Data Capture event on an existing object; custom events are right for business signals, not for general data replication.
- Create the Platform Event in Event Studio
From Setup, navigate to Event Studio and click New Platform Event. Provide the event name, plural label, and the fields with their types. Set the publishing controls to restrict which users can fire the event. Save. The Platform Event now exists as a queryable channel; immediately after creation, no subscribers exist and no events have been published. The event is ready for subscribers and producers to be wired up.
- Configure subscribers
Build the Apex trigger or Flow that subscribes to the event. For Apex, write a trigger on the Platform Event object that processes incoming events in bulk. For Flow, create a Record-Triggered Flow with the event as the trigger source. For external subscribers, configure the external system to subscribe via the Pub/Sub API or legacy streaming API. Test each subscriber by publishing a sample event from Event Studio's simulation tool and confirming the subscriber processes it correctly.
- Promote to production and monitor
Deploy the Platform Event definition and the subscriber code to production through the standard pipeline (Change Sets, SFDX, or DevOps Center). Activate the subscribers and confirm they receive events. Open Event Manager to monitor publish rates and subscriber lag during the first hours of production traffic. Set up alerts on any subscriber that falls behind. Schedule a weekly review of event metrics for the first month, then settle into the steady-state operating cadence.
The Platform Event type name and its constituent fields, designed before creation.
Required to create Platform Events and configure them in Event Studio.
At least one consumer to process the events. Events without subscribers are recorded but have no effect.
The org's edition determines available event publish and subscribe throughput; add-on allocation may be needed for high volume.
Documentation of the event purpose, fields, publishers, subscribers, and any operational considerations.
- Once a Platform Event is published to, changing its field shape is a versioning exercise. Design the event shape carefully before subscribers build against it.
- Publishing controls default to allowing any API-enabled user. Tighten the restrictions for high-impact events that should not be fired accidentally.
- Subscribers process events asynchronously. Synchronous behavior cannot be guaranteed, so design the integration with eventual-consistency assumptions.
- Replay is bounded by retention. Subscribers offline longer than the retention window lose events permanently.
- Test events fired from Event Studio behave identically to production events for subscribers. Be careful in sandbox to avoid triggering destructive downstream automation.