How to Create a Flow in Salesforce – Step by Step Guide

Over decades we have seen drastic changes in technology and the changes continue over time. The main motto behind these changes is to AUTOMATE the process. Simply reducing the user interaction involved in a process is known as Automation. It helps Business Organizations to increase their productivity and efficiency. Salesforce provides many automation tools. In this article, we are going to discuss about Flow in Salesforce.

What is Flow

Flow is an application inside the Salesforce that automates a business process by collecting data and performing operations in your org or an external system. Flow can fetch, delete, update and create records on multiple objects. Flows in Salesforce can be implemented in two ways

1. Screen Flows
2. Auto-launched Flow

Screen Flows

In this type of flow, there will be a series of screen elements to gather information from the user and perform some operation. Screen flows can be accessed from custom buttons, custom links, Visualforce Pages etc. This type of flow is implemented if a user interaction is needed in the process.

Auto-launched Flow

Auto-screenshot runs in the background without any user interaction. Auto-launched flows can be accessed from custom buttons, custom links, Visualforce Pages, process builder and Apex etc.

Consider a business scenario, an organizationwith name ABC PVT LTD has Accounts Object. The requirement is that Opportunity for an Account should be created automatically when a button is clicked on Account object. This can be achieved by creating a flow and accessing the flow using a custom button. Now I’ll be showing you how to create a salesforce flow to meet the above requirement.

Steps to Create Salesforce Flow

Below are the steps to create flow

• Go To setup-> Build-> Create-> Workflow& Approvals-> Flows.
• Click on the New Flow button. The following screen will be shown.

• There are three tabs in the above figure.

1.Palette: It consists of all the elementsthrough which user interacts. These elements are used to build the logic. Itconsists of User Interface, Logic Elements, Data section to handle DMLoperations, Quick Actions and Email Alerts.

2. Resources: Resources consist of Variables, formulae, Constant, sObject Variable etc. to collect the data, store the data and use them in the flow.

3. Explore: It consists of all the list of elements and resources which are used in the flow.

• Drag and drop the elements ontothe canvas to build the logic.
• Here we are creating opportunity from Account. We’ll create few variables to use in our flow. To create variable click onResource-> Variable. The following screen will be shown.

Continue Reading: Create a Flow in Salesforce – Step by Step Guide