Salesforce's Winter '23 Data Table Component. Winter is here, and it's beautiful.

With the Winter 23 release now in the wild the new features of Flows are really shining through. Over the coming days, we will delve into some of the key features which have been announced and how to use these to solve different business requirements.

One new feature that a lot of people I've spoken to are excited about is the new data table component. Now while this is in beta for this release it's a great feature that I'm sure a number of Salesforce professionals will be glad to see.

What is it?

The data table component is a component that you can add within a screen flow to show a collection of records. Previously, to achieve this you had to create a custom component to embed within your flow to achieve this functionality. UnofficialSF had a fantastic solution which I personally have used many times and it's welcoming to see that Salesforce has seen the value in including this within their Flow features.

At present you can customise the below information:

Row Selection

Whether you want to allow for one, or multiple records to be selected. There is also the option for View Only.

You are also able to define whether a minimum and a maximum number of rows are to be selected as well as the ability to set a default selection like other Flow Components (Lookups etc.)

Configure Columns

This is where you define what fields you want to show from the collection variable you've used in the table. You are also able to include a Custom Label (hardcoded) if you don't want to use the field label that is present.

From what I have found there does not seem to be a limit on the number of fields that you can use, however, I'd be cautious about adding too many fields for the user experience.

You can also use the "Set Component Visibility" and Advance assignment as with other components as well.

So what does this look like in practice?

So from running our flow we can see we've been provided a number of Accounts with the information which I had defined within my columns. Now, the records that I select are then stored in a record collection variable which can be accessed through the component.

From here with our collection variable, I can pass this through a loop, push to another Flow or process and continue my business process from here.

It's great to see this component make it into the new and improved Flow functionality and while it is still in Beta, there are promising steps to see where this component may go. Personally, I would love to see the inclusion of custom buttons from within the table and the ability to inline edit.

What would you like to see in the data table component?

The Salesforce Help article for the data table component is here