Flow Building Blocks, Triggering, and Entry Conditions

In this chapter, we will cover the main building blocks of Salesforce flows used in Flow Builder – elements, connectors, and resources. Then, we will discuss ways to trigger flow and entry/exit conditions. In this book, flows will be our primary tool where we will automate most tasks declaratively, such as workflows, email trigger notifications, field updates, and so on. The goal of this book is to explore and discuss automation tasks that can be performed with no-code and low-code users such as your system admins or business analysts. You will be able to understand the concepts of Salesforce flows and get equipped to start creating a flow at your organization.

We will cover the following topics in this chapter:

• Flow building blocks
• Flows to trigger business processes
• Flow entry and exit conditions
• Key considerations

By the end of this chapter, you will understand the previously mentioned three...

Flow building blocks

Before we get into flow building blocks, let’s take a step back and define flows and a tool to build flows called Flow Builder.

Salesforce flows are a visual algorithm of your process flow. They are based on flowchart models – these are a visual representation of the process in a sequence of steps and decision points. While process flows are depicted using flowcharts and are static, Salesforce flows are dynamic and living flowcharts that we can use to implement our business processes. Flow Builder is our tool that makes these flows come to life. The best part is that they are declarative automation features that team members can implement with low code.

Flow Builder utilizes all these building blocks and helps us create these flows on a canvas. Let’s take a look and learn the flow of building blocks.

There are three building blocks that we need for any Salesforce flow. They are as follows:

• Elements: This is a step that tells...

Flows to trigger business processes

We have seen various building blocks – elements, connectors, and resources. We use these basic building blocks to enable and trigger our business process steps. Based on the business process requirements, processes can be interactive with your end users, or they can run behind the scenes seamlessly.

There are two ways flows can be triggered:

1. Interactive experience flows: Here, users need to input or perform interactively on the screen. A good example would be to collect customer information and contact information on one simple user interface (UI) and let the flow take care of updates to multiple objects.
2. Behind-the-scenes automated flows: No user action is required. These flows run behind the scenes, and we can say they are 100% automated. Example: Generate an email notification to the account manager when a high-value opportunity status is changed to Closed Lost. Another example would be scheduling notifications for all open...

Flow entry and exit conditions

We have our building blocks and our flows to trigger a business process flow, so let’s now explore and see when they should be triggered and when they should exit. Just like how we develop business process flows, we need a process start and a process end. The entry conditions will trigger our flow. Example: When the opportunity stage changes to stage 50%, create a quote with product line items and assign a task to a sales team member.

Here, the change in opportunity stage is our entry condition, and assigning a task will be our exit condition. In case the flow fails, we need an exception message to the technical team, and in this case, this exception message will be an exit condition.

Entry conditions in Salesforce flows can be triggered by the following:

• Screen flows: Users can trigger via interactions on the screen. The entry criteria here is user input data on the screen that triggers the flow and exit with DML operations such...

Key considerations

Before you even venture into flows, make sure you take these key items into consideration:

• You and the project team need to be conversant with process flows, especially the “to-be” future state flow.
• To be able to define entry criteria and flow triggers, understand the persona, such as who will run the flow, which steps need to be executed, and when.
• Always consider exit criteria too. This is very important and needs to be accounted for. What do you want the flow to do if a step fails? How do we confirm that a given step in the flow is executed successfully?
• Plan out the complete flow visually on a flip chart or white paper and run it by a few SMEs. This will help you consolidate your understanding as well as make it easier when you create the flow in your Salesforce system.
• To do data loads, consider building a bypass in your flows to avoid hitting governor limits.
• Check and see if you are looping over large data volumes...

Summary

In this chapter, we understood what flows are made up of, various triggering mechanisms, and their entry/exit criteria, which will help you design and develop successful Salesforce flows that effectively confirm your business process flows and meet your business needs. For this, you need a deep understanding of your business process flow, and then, for each step of the flow, check for the following aspects:

• What are the flow building blocks can I use?
• How do I plan to trigger that business process step?
• What are your entry (input) and exit (output) criteria?

In the next chapter, we will explore and see the Order Of Execution (OOE) of how your system runs various tasks in the backend. OOE was critical in general for technical teams in the past, but now it is more important for every Salesforce team member to understand it as flows are declarative and low code and can be created by your admins or business analysts.

Questions

1. How are autolaunched flows triggered?
2. What is the difference between autolaunched flows versus autolaunched flows (no trigger)?
3. Can you call any custom button from screen flows?
4. What is the major difference between Actions and Custom buttons?

Further reading

Flow Builder Basics: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/content/learn/modules/flow-basics?trail_id=build-flows-with-flow-builder