Types of Salesforce Flows

This chapter will explore the five basic types of flows to automate our business processes. You will gain a deep understanding of scenarios for each of the flow types – screen flows, record-triggered flows, schedule-triggered flows, platform event-triggered flows, and autolaunched flows. We can create flows that let users interact with a user interface, initiated by screen flow, and run them automatically based on Data Manipulation Language (DML) actions. We will explore scheduled flows that can be scheduled at a future time and frequency, as well as platform event triggers that are triggered based on platform event messages.

We will cover the following Salesforce flow sections:

• The five basic types of flows in Salesforce:
  • Exploring screen flows
  • Exploring record-triggered flows
  • Exploring schedule-trigger flows
  • Exploring platform event-triggered flows
  • Exploring autolaunched flows
• Practical tips for success

We will review each of these...

Exploring five basic types of flows in Salesforce

In Salesforce, there are five basic (core) types of flows available via the Flow Builder tool. They are as follows:

• Screen flow: This guides users through a business process interactively and can be launched from lightning pages, custom buttons, actions, custom links, Lightning Web Components (LWC), and Experience Builder pages. An example of a screen flow is service agents collecting data from customers that can be used to update records, such as shipping addresses, or create cases.
• Record-triggered flow: This is triggered by DML actions such as record, create, update, or delete. An example of a record-triggered flow is when the opportunity stage is won, you close all quotes related to the opportunity and notify the deal registration team.
• Schedule-triggered flow: This launches at a specified time and frequency for each record in a batch. The autolaunched flow runs in the background and is triggered based on parameters...

Accessing flows in Salesforce

In this section, we will take a quick look at the Flow Builder and look at the landing page where we will be able to create the aforementioned five basic flows. To create flows, we use the Flow Builder user interface.

Flow Builder is a powerful tool for building flows in Salesforce to automate business processes. It is a declarative interface, and with clicks and low code, we can create code-like logic without actually coding. It has a toolbox with resources and elements that we can use to build a flow.

To navigate to Flows, go to Setup (Platform Tools) | Process Automation | Flows.

To view Flows in Salesforce, click on New Flows and All + Templates, as shown in Figure 6.1.

The Core tab will show you the basic flow, but the following view (All + Templates) will provide you with basic flows, as well as all the templates provided by Salesforce or third-party vendors via AppExchange. Explore various templates available out of the box, and see...

Practical tips for flow success

Let’s take a look at some practical tips from my experience that you may find useful when implementing various flow types:

• Before you start the development phase of the project, make sure you understand your users’ needs; this means you have an approved Business Requirement Document (BRD) or some kind of prioritized requirements document.
• Flow or no flow, stakeholders and project team members should understand their current and future business processes. This is even more important if you are trying to automate your complex business processes.
• Stagger your automation across multiple releases. Your road map should always try to deliver core functionality, even if it results in some redundancies and manual tasks. These manual tasks can be automated in a future release, based on usability and user feedback.
• Do not automate everything or anything. This does not create a good user experience. Sometimes, users may love interacting...

Summary

This chapter explored the five basic types of flows to automate our business processes. We discussed each flow type in detail with screenshots. We took simplified scenarios and went through explaining each step, looking at concepts and the rationale behind each flow. I hope you now have a better understanding of screen flows, record-triggered flows, schedule-triggered flows, platform event-triggered flows, and autolaunched flows, and how they meet your business needs. With practice, you will be well-equipped to create complex Salesforce flows at your organizations and automate your processes.

In the next chapter, you will learn how to share records via flows that are not available by any other means other than Apex coding. With flow, we have this great feature available where you can perform complex data sharing without resorting to code. You will get to see and explore a real-world business scenario.

Questions

1. Explain the different types of flows.
2. What would be a good use case for a record-triggered flow?
3. How do you differentiate an autolaunched flow (no trigger) from other autolaunched flows?
4. When do we use after-save triggers, and why do we use them?
5. What is the best way to make a screen flow available to users from any page within an app?
6. How do we make flows accessible to your users?

Further reading

• Screen Flows: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/content/learn/modules/screen-flows?trail_id=build-flows-with-flow-builder
• Autolaunched and Scheduled Flows: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/content/learn/modules/autolaunched-scheduled-flows?trail_id=build-flows-with-flow-builder
• FlowExecutionErrorEvent: https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.platform_events.meta/platform_events/sforce_api_objects_flowexecutionerrorevent.htm
• Flow Best Practices: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sf.flow_prep_bestpractices.htm&type=5