Follow and complete a Learn MOAR Winter ’22 trailmix for admins or developers by October 31 to earn a special community badge and enter for a chance to win one of five $200 USD Salesforce Certification vouchers. Restrictions apply. Learn how to participate and review the Official Rules by visiting the Trailhead Quests page.
I’m extremely excited to provide admins with a summary of Flow enhancements in the upcoming Winter ’22 Release in this new forum as an Admin Evangelist. The Automation team continues to amaze with all the cool features for our Flow-Nation!
This blog post doesn’t list out all the Flow-hancements (see what I did there?), but these are the ones I think admins would be most interested in.
Note that there are a few features on here designated as beta. This means the feature was rolled out publicly for testing. Beta features are normally given limited support, as they are not yet fully functional or finished features, so we recommend getting hands-on with these features in a sandbox.
Enjoy!
The moment we Flownatics have been waiting for is finally here! I hear you all cheering. We can now call subflows in a record-triggered flow after it’s saved or before a record is deleted.
A subflow is a fancy term for being able to reuse an existing flow in a new flow. You can build your automation in smaller, less complex, more manageable blocks. And, like Legos, you can build a new flow using multiple automation blocks. Build it once, maintain it once. Now who doesn’t want to work smart and not hard?!
Assign values of the $Record and $Record_Prior global variables to input and output variables to reference values held currently in the record and values that belonged to the record prior to the change.
This was the last of the parity gaps for Flow Builder to close so that admins can start creating record-triggered automation with Flow Builder instead of Process Builder. Note: Flow Builder is the future of no- to low-code automation. Start building your automation in Flow rather than in Process Builder.
The setup for a record-triggered flow has been redesigned into one interface. Select (1) your triggering object, (2) how you want the flow triggered, (3) the entry conditions, (4) when to run the flow, and (5) whether you’re making changes to the record itself or updates to the record and other actions.
Have automation that needs to run in the background and not delay the rest of your record-triggered transaction, but you want to do it using clicks, not code? You can now add an asynchronous path to your record-triggered flow for those long-running operations, like a callout to an external service or external object. You can also use this feature to avoid those mixed DML errors, such as when you make a change to a Contact and User object in the same automation. No more workarounds like adding a Screen Flow element, local action, or Pause element. An asynchronous path is equivalent to an Apex future built by developers.
Configure your record-triggered flow to run when the record is updated to meet the condition requirements or use the IsChanged operator in the condition. Then, select the “Include a Run Asynchronously path to access an external system after the original transaction for the triggering record is successfully committed.” Then, just set the connector to use the asynchronous path.
If a Flow element in a screen flow fails, you can roll back the transaction and all pending record changes using the new rollback feature. In your fault connector, add the new Rollback element that will allow you to roll back all transactions and cancel pending updates. Previously, if the Flow element fails, all pending record changes that were successfully executed were saved after the transaction ended, rather than rolling back all changes and cancelling pending record changes.
In the animated GIF below, you’ll see in Flow debugger the Create Opportunity element failing. This takes the flow down the fault path, resulting in the rollback of the changes. Awesome!
When testing your record-triggered flows, you do not need to navigate out of Flow Builder to make changes to the record and then open Flow debugger to test. Now, within the Flow debugger itself, you can select to run the flow as if the record was updated and then update the record values. Not only do you save clicks by making changes right in Flow debugger, but also, the changes made are temporary! All changes made to the record are rolled back.
On the debugger screen, select a record and Updated for “Run the Flow As If the Record Is:”, and edit the fields on the record. Note: All fields for the selected record’s object are shown in debugger.
In the new Triggered Flows list view, you can now see the object or platform event that triggered the flow, allowing you to easily identify all flows associated with a given object or platform event for troubleshooting or testing purposes.
To access the Triggered Flows list view and Triggering Object or Platform Event Label column, enable this process automation setting: “In Lightning Experience, use the enhanced Flows page and separate Paused and Scheduled Automations page”.
Ever need a scheduled record-triggered flow to start before or after a time source in time increments other than days or hours? Now, you have the ability to schedule paths in X number of minutes before or after!
I’m super excited about this feature, too! Now, you can retire the use of a custom footer component as you can do in the native Flow Builder tool. With this new enhancement, you can customize the label shown or the Previous, Pause, Next, and Finish footer buttons.
Flow will convert line breaks in a rich text email into HTML. Note: This update will not affect existing workarounds to resolve the issue.
When you create a new standalone choice item for a screen flow, you type it and can select “create ‘xxx’” choice in one step!
I love eliminating unnecessary clicks. There have been so many times when I’ve worked on a screen flow and needed to edit the choice resource, only to cancel out of the Screen Flow element and navigate to the choice resource to make changes. Clicks no more! You can now choose to edit the choice resource right from the editor itself.
You now have the ability to set the batch size to something smaller than 200 on a scheduled path. Simply go to Advanced Options in the scheduled path details and specify the batch size.
Small win: Loops in an auto-layout are now read clockwise instead of counter-clockwise as read previously.
Using the new Go-To connector, you can connect a Flow element to any other Flow element on an auto-layout canvas. Previously, you were restricted to only connecting to paths that were consecutive.
Optimizer will now identify any workflow rules in your org that you should consider moving over to Flow, with resources on how to get started with Flow.
The ability to send outbound messages in an after save record-triggered flow is finally here. Previously, this ability was only achievable using clicks, not code, with workflow rules. Now, you can send a SOAP message for a record-triggered flow to a designated endpoint.
This closes the last gap between workflow rules and Flow Builder. Start building your automation using the future declarative automation builder, Flow Builder.
Want to hear Automation Project Managers talk about these enhancements live, complete with demos? Be sure to tune in to Release Readiness Live! A handful of these highlights will be covered in the Release Readiness Live Admin Preview on September 10, and many more in the Einstein Automate: Flow & Bots Preview on September 15. Join us and ask questions live. And be sure to check out the Learn MOAR Winter ’22 for Admins Trailmix and follow along on the blog this week for more Learn MOAR!
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