In today’s era, customers and employees expect the process-based app experiences to be seamless and connected than ever before. However, this often requires integrating siloed data, building complex logic, designing beautiful UIs, and then these experiences need to be embedded in every touchpoint.
This is where Lightning Flow emerges as the effective solution. Salesforce Lightning Flow is a new Lightning Platform service that empowers businesses to build and extend the power of process automation. Lightning Flow offers enterprises innovative ways to leverage process automation with low-code, drag-and-drop functionality to customer engagement. Lightning Flow is now generally available and included with every platform, sales cloud, service cloud, or community cloud license.
Lightning Flow brings together several innovations from the Salesforce Lightning platform, including:
Lightning Flow Components – Use reusable Lightning components to create rich flow screens and visually guided processes.
Integrated process – Organize third-party workflows and services with platform events, services, and local actions.
Process-driven applications – With Lightning App Builder and Community Builder, you can embed Lightning Flow processes into every customer and employee experience.
This guide will teach you everything you need to know about new Lightning Flow features.
Let’s have a look at the innovative features.
Feature #1- Trigger a Flow to Run Before a Record is Deleted
You can now configure a new record–triggered flow to run before a record is deleted in Lightning Flow Builder. You don’t have to write Apex code to set it up. Whenever a record is deleted, this Autolaunched flow runs in the background and updates related records. Earlier, programmatic developers could only handle delete records. With the Salesforce Spring ‘21 release, admins and click-to-code developers can manage functions triggered by a record deletion.
Note: You can’t run ‘After Delete’ Flow, only ‘Before Delete.’. This is different from creating or editing Flows.
Feature #2- Debug Autolaunched Flows Directly on the Canvas (Beta)
You can now debug an Autolaunched flow without opening a new browser tab. For this, you need to click Debug on Canvas (Beta) in Flow Builder and view the path the flow took at runtime.
Debugging tool enhancements makes it easier to test and fix errors in the flow. Many error emails already have a link that opens the Flow Builder, where you can view the interview path on the canvas and details of the error. Additionally, you can now debug schedule-triggered flows and Autolaunched flows without triggers directly on the canvas.
Feature #3- Build Multi-Column Screens in Flow Builder
Flow Builder now has multi-column layouts available. With the new Section component, you can arrange your flow screen components into multiple columns without coding. Divide each flow screen into various sections and easily modify the number of columns in each section to create effective, visually appealing layouts.
Feature #4- Debug Flow Errors in Sandbox Org as Another User
Debugging in a sandbox org is now easier than ever because you can debug a flow as another user. Debugging a flow as another user, you can catch flow exceptions such as unexpected permission, sharing, and profile configurations before they occur in production org.
Note: To enable this feature, go to Setup – Process Automation Settings
After enabling this permission, you can now run Flow as a different user.
Feature #5- Improve the Performance and Precision of Record-Triggered Flows with Entry Criteria
Salesforce has added entry criteria to record-triggered flows to provide you with more control over your automation. Now, you don’t have to configure the flow to run every time a record is created or edited; you can now configure it to run only when condition requirements are met. This optimization can also significantly reduce your record-triggered flows’ impact on your org’s performance, depending on the flow.
Feature #6- Send Rich Text Emails from Your Flow Using a Send Email Action
Using a Send Email action, you can send an email in rich text format. Previously, only plain text was available for Send Email actions, and with an email alert, you could send a rich text email. With the new Salesforce release, there were various run-time error improvements for Send Email actions to catch invalid email addresses and sender types.
Feature #7- Control Revisited Screen Values in Flows
You can now control what you want to do when users visit Old/Previous Screens in Screen Flows. Earlier, it used to keep the old values, but now you can decide if you want to keep the old values or if you want to refresh the values.
Drag a Lightning component such as the Toggle screen, Slider screen, or custom screen to a screen. Then, from the component’s properties pane, select Advanced, and choose an option to Revisited Screen Values.
Feature #8- Time-Based Actions or Time-Dependent Actions for Record Triggered Flows
The area where the Flow was behind Process Builder or even Workflow was the lack of Flow Time Based / Time-Dependent Actions or Time-Triggered Actions from Flows. And we had to rely on other options in such use cases. It has now become more powerful and flexible than a Process builder or a Workflow.
Feature #9- Use Auto-Layout to place and connect elements in Flow automatically
The new auto-layout feature makes it easy to create flows and align elements., Elements in the canvas are spaced and connected automatically when auto-layout is enabled on a flow.
Feature #10- Quickly See the Triggers of Your Flows on the Flows Page in Setup
Now, in Setup, you can easily see which triggers your Autolaunched flow has at the Flows list view. In the new Trigger column, see if a flow’s trigger is a record, a schedule, or a platform event. You can also know which trigger an Autolaunched flow has through the Flow’s detail page.
Conclusion
In Salesforce, a flow is an application that helps you automate complex business processes and manual data entry to put an end. Lightning Flows empower you to work smarter by saving your users time and ensuring the required tasks are accomplished correctly. You can get the most out of these best Salesforce Flow features to make your work productive, efficient, highly profitable, and effective.
Are you looking to drive your business efficiency and collaboration by getting the most of Salesforce’s CRM platform? As a leading Salesforce Consulting partner, Cloud Analogy delivers end-to-end Salesforce consulting services to help businesses transform their business processes and achieve a higher return on their Salesforce investment. Get in touch with the Cloud Analogy team.
