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Planning Your Switch to Flow Builder
Workflow Rules and Process Builder are no longer the preferred tools for automating your business processes. With their pending retirement, now is the time to go with Flow Builder as the future of automated processes. Flow Builder is a foundation for the future and offers built-in extensibility, application lifecycle management, and faster performance.
Required Editions
| View supported editions. |
This video explains the advantages to using Flow Builder over Process Builder.
View this video in a separate tab.
There are several areas to focus your efforts as plan your switch to Flow Builder.
Analyze Your Automation
To start your migration journey, analyze your existing automation.
- Categorize your most commonly used automation types.
- Observe your org’s flow activity in reports and dashboards, such as total errors and total started automations.
- View your Flow Interview Logs and Flow Interview Log Entries.
- Run the Sample Flow Report: Screen Flows report. Use the reports to examine run-time details about your screen flows.
- Use the metrics to discover usage patterns and in turn to optimize your screen flows for users.
Migrate in a Sandbox First
It’s critical to keep your existing data safe before you make any changes. Working in a sandbox ensures that no data is harmed as you make you move to Flow Builder.
Catalog Your Current Automation
There are many ways to create a catalog. You can create a spreadsheet. Organize your automations by Object. Include the Category, Entry Criteria, and Related Actions as you catalog. You can create a diagram to aid in your visualization.
Identify and Remove Redundant Processes
Evaluate whether processes are still needed or can be improved. Common culprits of redundancy can include:
| Redundancy | Example |
|---|---|
| Multiple entry points per Object | There are multiple processes and Workflow Rules on an Account update performing overlapping business cases. |
| Recursive updates |
|
| Conflicting Actions | A Fast Field Update flow that updates a field while a Workflow Rule overrides the same field value. |
Prioritize Which Processes to Migrate First
Migrate the processes that speed up the record updates and take less time and effort to migrate. Start with a Single Object. Pick the object that has the least number of Workflow Rules and processes associated with it. Processes that send email alerts or perform same-record field updates are good beginner options for migration.
Structure Your Automation
As you think about your business needs, here are some common considerations:
- Performance: Can you use Entry Conditions or other optimizations to reduce unnecessary operations?
- Maintenance and Change Management: Who is responsible for this business process? What is the likelihood of change or iteration?
- Migration from Workflow Rules and processes to flows isn’t one to one. You don’t always have to create a flow for each process you’re migrating.
- Analyze your existing flows and see if there are corresponding elements that you can update, or incorporate new actions in an existing flow.
- Consider whether the more complex automation processes can be reused and implemented as subflows.
- Review whether there’s a better solution that doesn’t involve automation.
Example: A Workflow Rule or process only updates a field on the Case object after it’s created. Replace it with a formula field instead.
Think Beyond One Flow Per Object
You can design your automation to have multiple flows per object. For a more scalable future, order your flows with the Trigger Order option. Use Flow Trigger Explorer to assign priority values to your flows. With this tool, multiple flows per object are manageable.
Optimize Your Record-Triggered Automations
Building efficient record-triggered flows can help minimize some flow limits. Here are the options you can select to improve efficiency as you build your flows.
| Option | When the Flow Runs | When to Use It | Benefit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fast Field Update | During the record update that triggered the flow and before that update is saved. | To update the record that triggered the transaction. | Optimal performance because it’s limited to updating the triggering record |
| Related Records and Actions | During the record update that triggered the flow and after that update is saved. |
|
Automating common processes triggered by record changes, |
| Run Asynchronously | Immediately after the record update that triggered the flow is complete. | When you execute more advanced scenarios like sending requests to external systems or performing other long-running processes. | Avoids slowing down or blocking the record update that triggered the flow. |
Optimize Your Entry Conditions
Set Entry Conditions to decrease the performance impact. Used effectively, Entry Conditions prevent automation from running unnecessarily and improve performance. Set entry conditions to run a flow when a record is created or edited and a field has a specific value. Or set entry conditions when a record is created or edited and a field IS CHANGED to a specified value. If you only check the field values when the record is created or edited, there are no additional steps beyond creating the entry conditions. To create entry conditions that check what the field values are changed to when the record is created or edited, enable the Run When Conditions Met setting. Enabling this setting prevents repeat operations and maintains consistency.
Replace Time-Dependent Workflow Rules with Scheduled Paths
Add a Scheduled Path to a record-triggered flow. Scheduled Paths occur in the future, after the trigger has fired, based on dates and times. You can schedule such actions as reminders or follow-ups based on dates in the record that triggered the automation, such as Close Date. This feature also rechecks the entry conditions.
Example: Set your entry condition to Status = Escalated and then have an automation that sends a reminder two days before close. The reminder only sends if the status remains escalated.
Order Your Automation
You can use Flow Trigger Explorer to view the order in which your automation runs or to reorder flows. The flow executes in the order described to minimize disruption from other automation, managed packages, or movement between orgs. With flow trigger ordering, you can assign a priority value to your flows. To see all of the associated flows that run when a record is created, updated, or deleted, select an object. This action allows for easy navigation between flows that run under the same circumstances.
Document your flows with descriptions.
Use the Description field on elements, resources, scheduled paths, and flow versions to document the intent behind your flow. Descriptions reduce confusion and make future updates easier.
To find and update resources that are missing descriptions, open the Toolbox panel 
, open Filters 
, and select Missing Description. The results show elements
and resources without descriptions, so you can quickly document your flow.
Test in a Sandbox
To protect the data in your org, always test in a sandbox before moving any changes to production.
Deactivate Old Automations as You Rebuild
By default, active processes and flows are deployed as inactive. After deployment, manually reactivate the new versions and deactivate the old.
Resources
The Salesforce Admins: Automation page is a great resource to help you start automating business processes. You can explore flow templates on AppExchange, or navigate to an automation tool directly.
