Salesforce Flow — is it really the Future?

Flows: I’ll keep it short on what a Flow is: It’s just another process automation mechanism in Salesforce similar to Process Builders and Work Flows. The main sale point of Flows is that you don't need to know a programming language to create a Flow. However, It is not true. You need to have some level of programming knowledge and have a decent understanding of data types, conditionals, sequencing, and Iterations. I personally think that the industry is still not leveraging its full potential.

There is no point in debating whether Flows are any better than Process Builders or WorkFlows. Salesforce clearly saw a gap, and the limitations in these mechanisms forced them to come up with a new tool. Flows are nothing but Process Builder plus Work Flows on Steroids. Flows are the future and it’s time we all adopt and embrace them.

If you are wondering where to start. Don’t straight away jump designing a Flow. First, Understand the business problem and there are Five ways that a Flow can be invoked as of this writing. Each of these has a purpose and they all run in the background except for the Screen Flow.

• Screen Flow: These are usually launched by quick actions or you can bind them to button clicks. LWC and Screen Flow combined can do some real magic.
• Schedule-Triggered Flow: This can be launched at a specific time and query a particular object and perform a specified operation on the resultset. This is similar to Scheduled and Batch Jobs in Apex.
• Autolaunched Flow: This flow is useful when you want to invoke the Flow using REST API or Apex. Bye-bye Custom Rest API.
• Record-Triggered Flow: This flow is launched when a record is created or updated or deleted. This is an exact replacement for the Apex Triggers.
• Platform Event-Triggered Flow: This flow is launched when a platform event message is consumed. Essentially Salesforce binds this flow to the publisher and keeps listening to the message. Also, Events are gaining traction in the Salesforce world for quite some time now.

Salesforce pretty much covered every area that Apex and LWC are shining. The goal is to simplify the process of writing code. I think there is no other tool in the industry that is as robust as Flow. However, There are some lackings. But, for the most common use-cases — Flows are super good.

Once the decision of how to invoke a Flow is made the next step is to determine the layout of the Flow. If the Flow is simple enough — go with Auto-Layout, This is trivial for simple Flows. However, if you are going for a complex scenario, for the sake of readability Freeform Flows are good.

Flows have almost everything that you can think of and it serves (90% of the common use cases) Again, It’s 90%. The 10% always complain that the Flows are not up to the mark.

Your imagination is the limit for Flows. They are extendable and scalable.

source: https://www.gearscrm.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Flow-Sample.png

Conclusion: In conclusion, Flows are here to stay and they are going to get way advanced than what they are today. Flow addresses the gap that could not be filled by Process Builders and Work Flows. They are not the silver bullet to all your problems. No tool or technology can be. But, Flows are trying to simplify the art of writing code. Nevertheless, I doubt that Individuals without the knowledge of programming basics can create or maintain Flows.