Using Platform Events for Apex Automations

 Platform Events are meant for integration with other platforms outside of Salesforce. However, you could also define apex triggers on platform events, this helps in certain situations like below

• If you want to execute the apex as another user (with elevated access) other than the running/current user, even though apex triggers run as system user the running user is still the user who initiated the transaction
• Since platform events run asynchronously, these run on a separate thread and help as an alternative when you run into governor limits on an object apex trigger

Sample Use Case: Opportunity trigger is running into CPU timeout exception, you are moving automation's that run after Opportunity stage moves to Closed Won into a asynchronous operation to avoid CPU timeout.

STEP 1: Create a platform Event:

 

Step 2: Create a custom field

Create a custom field on the platform event to store the Opportunity ID 

 

Step 3: Create the apex trigger

Step 4: Call the platform event trigger by simply creating a record from the Opportunity trigger or a flow

Note: The platform event object needs to be granted access to the profiles that will be creating the event record, FLS is not applicable