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Be it automation of business processes, simplification of tasks, or enhancing user experience, Salesforce Flows have become an essential tool. They provide developers with the ability to streamline operations and reduce any manual effort. This ultimately empowers the organization to work more efficiently. However, to get the most out of them, following the Salesforce flow best practices is crucial. Keeping them in mind and aligning with governance limits will help you ensure performance, maintainability, and scalability.
Read along to find out some of the best practices to build robust and optimized flows, which help you avoid common pitfalls and ensure a smooth user experience.
Key Takeaways
- Flows are declarative automation tools that allow users to create applications without writing any piece of code.
- It is important to apply Salesforce flow best practices while executing them for best results and preventing any errors.
- Always plan you flows before building.
- Avoid using DML statement loops in flows.
- Reduces redundancy and improves efficiency with subflows.
- Don’t create flows for everything and use triggers wherever applicable.
- Use only one automation tool per object.
- Don’t hardcode IDs, instead make custom labels.
- Implement fault paths for error handling.
- Document your flows to make sure people understand your intent.
- Make and test your flows in a sandbox environment.
What are Salesforce Flows?
Salesforce Flows are declarative automation tools that allow users to create applications without writing any piece of code. They help automate complex business processes by guiding users through screens, updating records, sending emails, and more. Flows can range from simple step-by-step guides to intricate automation routines, making them highly versatile for a wide range of use cases in Salesforce.
Salesforce Flow Best Practices to Implement
Here is a list of 10 best practices that you should implement throughout the development process of your flows in Salesforce:
1. Plan Before You Start Building Flows
Planning is an important stage at the beginning of any project, and Salesforce Flows should have a planning phase as well. It is best to make a proper plan before you start building your flows based on requirements. A spontaneous flow, in most cases, leads to unnecessary error messages. Ask yourself and your team about the problem this flow will be solving, where it hooks into the business process, and what object group it is going to touch during execution. This will make it easier and more safe to build a flow without errors.
2. Do Not Use DML Statement Loops
It is best not to add any DML statement loop in a flow. When you perform a repetitive Get, Update, Create, or Delete inside of a Loop, you will get a Salesforce flow limit exception error from SOQL. This means you will hit your DML limits, and the flow might fail. Instead, you can use the bulkification method to control the number of times a data element is used. This will also decrease the risk of hitting your governor limits in a flow.
3. Focus on Building Reusable Flows – Subflows
Building flows can be unnecessary in some cases, and it is better to build reusable flows that can be called from one or more parent flows. These are called subflows. It is usually used to reduce the pressure from a flow and pass on some automotive actions and calculations to a subflow. They make the working of a flow efficient if you build a part of a complex action and use it in multiple flows. This will improve your programming and make it faster as well.
Subflows consist of:
- Subflow inputs to pass variables to the actions in the subflow.
- A sequence of actions, flow logic, and subflows.
- Subflow outputs to create data (variables) for use by other flow actions or subflows.
4. Don’t Create Flows for Everything
We know we are talking about Salesforce flow best practices, but it is not always ideal to create a flow. There are other ways to find a solution, such as a Formula or a Report. You may face instances when making a choice between the many options available to you; thus, it is important to know when to use which method. If you can handle a problem with alternatives like an Apex Trigger, then it is wise to use a trigger.
5. Don’t mix Trigger, Process Builder, Flow, and Record Trigger Flow
Avoid mixing Trigger, Process Builder, Flow, and Record-Triggered Flow in your development. For each object, it’s best to choose one automation tool based on your business needs and the Salesforce team’s support. Mixing tools like Apex triggers with Flows or Process Builders with Record-Triggered Flows can cause problems like poor performance, unexpected results, and increased technical debt. A common practice is to handle data updates (DML) with Apex while using Flows for non-DML tasks like sending emails. Be cautious to prevent conflicts, especially as best practices for Record-Triggered Flows are still evolving.
6. Don’t Hardcore IDs
Hardcoding IDs is often seen as a bad practice due to their inflexibility while making changes. When you switch environments, creating or updating a record will be difficult because of these hardcoded record IDs. In fact, flows allow you to access information like Record type and IDs easily, which is why there is no requirement for hard coding. To avoid hard-coding IDs in flows, you can:
- Query them using the Get Records features.
- Store IDs using Custom Labels or Custom Metadata Types.
7. Create Fault Paths to Handle Errors
Errors are inevitable, and you cannot avoid them. But you can create fault paths to handle them as they happen. Error handling is when you have set an action to be executed in case of a failure in a flow. This can be done by creating a fault path, which can either be an error screen or sending an email alert to people which describes the error. You can also create strategies to log these errors in your Apex Code if you work with enterprise-level implementations of flows.
8. Always Document Your Flows
Documentation is a key skill in any part of development and beyond. It is always a good idea to document the flows, which include the purpose of the flow, actions, and objects involved, as well as all the minor details. These will help you come up with a solution whenever a problem occurs. The documentation is also essential to keep the teams and people in the loop as it helps them understand your flow, important elements, and functions.
9. Tests for Salesforce Flow
It is important and advised to test your flows before executing them. The flow builder allows you to use the declarative framework to create, save, and run your flow tests. This feature is used to test the flow extensively in order to avoid any discrepancies. There is also a debug mode to speed up the test process, identify issues, and fix them before moving to deployment.
10. Build in Sandbox Environment
Building a flow in a production environment itself can only mean unnecessary risks and failure. Instead, create a Sandbox environment to build and test your flows for better management. There is no scope for redo if you fail any execution in the production environment, which might lead to data loss. Make sure to test your flows only in a development-based sandbox. Then, you can create or update any changes in the production itself. Hence, build and test it in a sandbox and update it in production!
To Sum Up
Flows in Salesforce are a great way to automate things and save time. But it is only possible to execute them with best practices in mind. Here’s a TL;DR of the best practices for Salesforce Flows:
- Plan before building: Avoid errors by carefully planning your flow.
- Avoid DML statement loops: Use bulkification to prevent limit exceptions.
- Create reusable subflows: Reduces redundancy and improves efficiency.
- Don’t create flows for everything: Use alternatives like triggers when appropriate.
- Avoid mixing automation tools: Use one automation tool per object.
- Avoid hardcoding IDs: Use custom metadata or labels for flexibility.
- Implement fault paths for error handling: Handle errors gracefully.
- Document your flows: Ensure maintainability.
- Test in sandbox: Avoid deploying untested flows in production.
