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Flow Builder Considerations
When you create a flow in Flow Builder, familiarize yourself with its limitations and behaviors. For example, Flow Builder supports only a few locales. Because of intellectual property protection, you can’t open flows installed from managed packages, unless the flows are templates.
Required Editions
| View supported editions. |
Access to Salesforce Data
- Flow Builder uses the permissions and locale assigned to the current user.
- Flow Builder has access to information that exists when you open it. If you modify data or metadata in your org and must refer to it in a flow, close and reopen Flow Builder. For example, if you add a custom field or modify an Apex class with Flow Builder open, close and reopen Flow Builder.
Opening Flows That were Saved in Cloud Flow Designer
When you open a flow version created with Cloud Flow Designer in Flow Builder, the Save button is disabled. To edit that version in Flow Builder, save it as a new version in Flow Builder.
Text Formatting
If you open the Display Text screen component, Choice resource labels, help text, Pause confirmation screens, or input validation, Flow Builder converts existing HTML to rich text. Unsupported HTML is removed. The following HTML tags are converted to rich text: <a>, <b>, <br>, <font>, <i>, <li>, <p>, <span>, <u>, and <div>. HTML that is pasted into the rich text editor isn't supported.
Rich Text
- Images uploaded with the rich text editor are stored in the Files tab, and are visible to everyone in your org.
- Images uploaded with the rich text editor aren’t visible in Experience Cloud sites.
- Toggle back to plain text when using a text template in a Post to Chatter action, Send
Email action, or in a custom action that expects plain text. Click
and select Plain Text. -
If you include incomplete HTML symbols such as < in rich text, Flow Builder removes the symbols and adjacent strings. For example, Flow Builder renders 2<3 as 2. Include spaces around HTML symbols to render them. For example, 2 < 3.
Date/Time Values
At run time, time zones for date/time values can differ from what you see in Flow Builder. During run time, date/time values reflect the time zone settings of the user who’s running the flow. In Flow Builder, date/time values reflect the time zone settings of the admin who configures the flow.
Limits
- Each flow interview that executes the flow element Get Records or Update Records enforces the SOQL query limit for the maximum number of characters because the element uses a SOQL query. For each element per flow interview, the SOQL query limit is 100,000 characters. For example, a flow interview executes the Get Records element that uses the In operator on a collection of account IDs. If the element contains a collection of account IDs that exceeds 4,700 IDs and specifies other criteria to exceed the 100,000 character limit, the flow interview can fail.
Permissions
- For flows that interact with the Salesforce database, make sure that your users have permission to create, read, edit, and delete the relevant records and fields. Otherwise, users receive an insufficient privileges error when they try to launch a flow. For example, a flow looks up and updates a case record's status. The flow users must have Read and Edit permissions on the Status field of the Case object.
Variables
- If you delete a record variable or record collection variable, variable assignments that
use the deleted variable are set to
null. -
When a process or flow launches another flow, that flow’s
input variables can be assigned values during the launch.
However, for a text, picklist, or multi-select picklist
variable that isn’t a collection, a value of
nullis converted to an empty string. - Storing field values automatically in the Get Record element is available only for screen flows and autolaunched flows.
Text Values
- Flow Builder doesn't support UTF-8 encoding for text in user input fields.
-
Flow Builder contains embedded fonts for all locales it supports. The supported locales are:
- Chinese (Traditional)
- Chinese (Simplified)
- English (US)
- French (France)
- German (Germany)
- Japanese (Japan)
- Spanish (Spain)
If you enter unsupported characters for a supported locale, they’re displayed by using system fonts instead of the embedded fonts.
In unsupported locales, your system font settings are used to display all characters in Flow Builder.
- Don't enter the string null as the value of a text field in Flow Builder.
Output Values
To store the same output value in multiple variables, assign the value to one variable. Then add an Assignment element after the action, and set the other variables to the value of the first variable.
Managed Packages
Flow Builder can’t open a flow that is installed from a managed package, unless the flow is a template or overridable.
Flow Elements
- Step Elements: You can’t add or update step elements to a flow in Flow Builder. You also can’t convert steps into screens. If you added a step in Cloud Flow Designer, the step still appears on the canvas. We recommend that you remove all steps from your flows.
- Action Elements: Legacy Apex actions aren’t organized by the tag in the plug-in code.
- Email Action Elements: If the list of recipients in an email action element contains both internal and external addresses, the flow creates and sends two separate emails. This separation prevents internal email addresses from accidentally surfacing to external viewers.
Flows Upgraded from Winter ’12 and Earlier
If you open a flow that was last opened in Winter '12 or earlier, each Boolean decision is converted to a multi-outcome Decision element that:
- Uses the same label as the old decision.
- Takes the API name of the old decision, appended with “_switch”.
- Has an outcome labeled “True”. This outcome's API name matches that of the old decision, and its conditions are migrated from the True outcome of the old decision.
- Has a default outcome labeled “False”.
Terminology
The terminology in some warnings, error messages, and debug details isn’t updated for Flow Builder or Cloud Flow Designer.
