Universal Containers expects impacts to operations due to increased demand. The executive team will reach out to current customers and wants to see…

The standard relationship between the Account and Case objects is a lookup, which prevents the use of standard Roll-up Summary Fields. Flow is the appropriate declarative tool to meet this requirement. An app builder can create a record-triggered flow on the Case object that updates a custom counter field on the parent Account record. Alternatively, a screen flow embedded on the Account page can dynamically query and display the count of open cases for both the current account and its parent account, fulfilling all aspects of the request without code.

B. Approval Process: This is used for formal record approval sequences, not for aggregating or counting related records.

C. Roll-up summary: This feature is not available on the standard Account-Case relationship because it requires a Master-Detail relationship, and Account-Case is a Lookup.

D. Custom object: Creating a custom object is a data modeling action and does not provide the automation logic needed to calculate and display a count.

References:

1. Salesforce Help Documentation, "Create a Roll-Up Summary Field": This document explicitly states the prerequisite for using roll-up summary fields. "You can create roll-up summary fields only on an object that is on the master side of a master-detail relationship." This confirms why option C is incorrect for the standard Account-Case relationship.

2. Salesforce Help Documentation, "Relationships Among Standard Objects": This resource illustrates the standard object model, confirming that the relationship from Case to Account is a lookup relationship (AccountId), not a master-detail relationship.

3. Salesforce Architects, "Record-Triggered Automation Decision Guide": This guide recommends using a record-triggered flow for "Use Case: A record needs to be updated on a related object that is a parent of the triggering record’s parent (for example, the grandparent)." This pattern directly applies to creating roll-up-like summaries across lookup relationships, validating Flow as the correct tool.

4. Salesforce Help Documentation, "Flow Builder": The capabilities of Flow, including the Get Records and Update Records elements, are detailed here. These elements provide the necessary logic to query related Case records, count them based on criteria (e.g., 'Status' != 'Closed'), and update a field on the associated Account record.