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Workflow Considerations
Learn the intricacies of workflow rules and workflow actions before you begin working with them.
Required Editions
| Available in: Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic |
| Available in: Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions |
Important Support and updates for Workflow Rules have ended as
of December 31, 2025. This means that support won't be provided for any workflow rules and
bugs in the Workflow Rules product won't be fixed. See Workflow Rules & Process Builder End of Support.
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.
- Each workflow rule applies to a single object.
- If you have workflow rules on converted leads and want to use cross-object field updates on the resulting accounts and opportunities, you must enable the lead setting Require Validation for Converted Leads.
- If the custom object is deleted, workflow rules on custom objects are automatically deleted.
- The order that individual actions and types of actions are executed in isn’t guaranteed. Field update actions are executed first, followed by other actions.
- To create workflow rules that update case fields based on new case comments or incoming email messages, choose Case Comment or Email Message from the Select Object dropdown list. Email Message is only available if Email-to-Case or On-Demand Email-to-Case is enabled. You can only create email message workflow rules for field updates, and case comment workflow rules for field updates, email alerts, and outbound messages. For example, you can create a workflow rule so that an email marked as Is Incoming changes its case's Status from Closed to New.
- Changes you make to records while using Connect Offline are evaluated by workflow rules when you synchronize.
- Salesforce processes rules in this order.
- Validation rules
- Assignment rules
- Auto-response rules
- Workflow rules (with immediate actions)
- Escalation rules
- If a lookup field references a record that is deleted, Salesforce clears the value of the lookup field by default. Or you can choose to prevent record deletions if they’re in a lookup relationship.
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If you create workflow rules to replace any Apex triggers, make sure to delete those Apex triggers when you activate the equivalent workflow rules. Otherwise, Apex triggers and workflow rules both fire and cause unexpected results, such as overwritten field updates or redundant email messages.
- When an Account record’s owner field is changed, processes and workflows defined on the child object don’t get triggered to run.
When Do Workflow Rules Get Triggered?
- Workflow rules can be triggered any time a record is saved or created, depending on your rule criteria. Rules created after saving records don’t affect those records retroactively.
- Workflow rules are triggered when a standard or custom object in a master-detail or lookup relationship is reparented, even if the object's evaluation criteria is set to Evaluate the rule when a record is: created, and any time it’s edited to subsequently meet criteria.
- Saving or creating records can trigger more than one rule.
- Workflow rules only trigger on converted leads if validation and triggers for lead convert are enabled in your Salesforce org.
- Workflow rules trigger automatically and are invisible to the user. Alternatively, approval processes allow users to submit records for approval.
- If your organization uses multiple languages, enter filter values in your individual
language. You can add up to 25 filter criteria, of up to 255 characters each.
When you use picklists to specify filter criteria, the selected values are stored in your org's default language. If you edit or clone existing filter criteria, first set the Default Language on the Company Information page to the same language that was used to set the original filter criteria. Otherwise, the filter criteria no longer matches your picklist values and returns inaccurate results.
- If you use record types in your workflow rule criteria whose labels have been translated using the translation workbench, the translated label value doesn’t trigger the workflow rule. Workflow criteria evaluate the primary label value and ignore the translated value. To avoid this problem, set the workflow criteria to evaluate the main record type label value by entering it manually in the Value field.
- Campaign statistic fields, such as individual campaign statistics and campaign hierarchy statistics, can’t trigger workflow rules.
- If its condition references a field that doesn't have a value, a workflow rule isn't
triggered. For example, if a User-based workflow rule checks “Role not equal to CEO”, the
rule isn’t triggered for a user without an assigned role. Instead of conditions, use a
formula to check that the field is either null or set to something other than
“CEO”:
UserRoleId == null || UserRole.Name != "CEO" - The following actions don't trigger workflow rules.
- Mass replacing picklist values
- Using the option to replace a picklist value while deleting the current value.
- Mass updating address fields
- Mass updating divisions
- Changing the territory assignments of accounts and opportunities
- Converting leads to person accounts
- Deactivating Self-Service Portal, Customer Portal, or Partner Portal users
- Converting state, country, and territory data from the State and Country/Territory Picklists page in Setup
- Changing state and country/territory picklists using AddressSettings in the Metadata API
Workflow Rule Limitations
- You can't package workflow rules with time triggers.
- You can't create outbound messages for workflow rules on junction objects.
- Workflow for the User Object (Beta)
You can create workflow rules and actions for the User object. You can, for example, send welcome emails to new employees or sync user data with a third-party service using outbound message actions. - Considerations for Time-Dependent Actions and Time Triggers
When creating time-dependent actions and time triggers for workflow rules, consider these factors. - Flow Trigger Considerations (Pilot)
Flow trigger workflow actions have special behaviors and limitations.
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