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Activate Your Workflow Rule
Salesforce doesn’t trigger a workflow rule until you activate it.
Required Editions
| Available in: Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic |
| Available in: Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions |
| User Permissions Needed | |
|---|---|
| To create or change workflow rules and actions: | Customize Application |
After December 31, 2025, existing workflow rules continue to run, and you can activate, deactivate, and edit them; however we recommend using Flow Builder. To migrate existing workflow rules, plan your switch to Flow Builder and use the Migrate to Flow tool. For new automations, create flows in Flow Builder.
To activate a workflow rule, click Activate on the workflow rule detail page. Click Deactivate to prevent a rule from triggering or if you want to edit the time-dependent actions and time triggers that are associated with the rule.
You can deactivate a workflow rule at any time. However, if you deactivate a rule that has pending actions, Salesforce completes those actions as long as the record that triggered the rule isn’t updated.
- You can't delete a workflow rule that has pending actions in the workflow queue. Wait until pending actions are processed, or use the workflow queue to cancel the pending actions.
- You can't add time-dependent workflow actions to active workflow rules. Deactivate the workflow rule first, add the time-dependent workflow action, and reactivate the rule.
