Flow Builder: A Fast, Easy, and More Intuitive Flow Building Tool

At TrailheaDX ’18, we launched Lightning Flow — our process automation solution. Lightning Flow helps you tackle the broadest set of business process challenges, with the help of two tools that you already know and love: Process Builder and Cloud Flow Designer. Now, we’re making Lightning Flow even better with the launch of a new tool called Flow Builder — a faster and easier tool for assembling flows. This replaces the existing Cloud Flow Designer tool.

Flow Builder was created with our newest and most innovative front-end technologies to give you the best flow building experience yet. As you know, Cloud Flow Designer has been a part of the Lightning Platform for many years (since 2012, in fact!). Since then, we’ve made some significant improvements, including support for flow screens using Lightning components, access to debug information from inside the tool, and association of flows to records using the Guided Action List component. And since Adobe Flash is being retired, we’ve made sure that Flow Builder is Flash-free, too.

So, between various advancements in technology and increasing expectations among both employees and customers, we decided it was about time to evolve the flow building experience. And that’s exactly what we did!

 

What’s different about Flow Builder?

 

In order to improve the flow building experience, we designed Flow Builder with four key design principles in mind:

• Clarity
• Efficiency
• Consistency
• Beauty

With those principles in mind, the new Flow Builder features:

• Familiar and intuitive shapes to make flows easier to read
• Lightning-fast performance built with the latest technologies
• Standard controls based on the Lightning Design System to make the builder more efficient to use
• A simplified toolbox to make it easier to find the element you’re looking for

How to transition from Cloud Flow Designer to Flow Builder

 

Flow Builder will be available in both Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic. To migrate from Cloud Flow Designer to Flow Builder, here’s what you need to do: nothing!

Your flows, whether active or inactive, will continue to run like they did before. In fact, all flows created in Cloud Flow Designer will open effortlessly in the new Flow Builder. Whenever you modify and save an existing flow in Flow Builder, Salesforce automatically saves it as a new version of the flow. That way, your original version isn’t ever overwritten.

However, it’s worth noting that flows or flow versions that have been saved in Flow Builder will not be able to open in Cloud Flow Designer.

Introducing a new category on AppExchange: Flow Solutions

 

We’re investing big in Lightning Flow. But we don’t want to keep you waiting on new Lightning Flow capabilities until Flow Builder launches in Spring ’19. That’s why we’ve made new Flow Solutions available today on AppExchange (part of the Winter ’19 release).

Flow Solutions on AppExchange launches with a growing collection of partner-built integrations called Flow Actions. Flow Actions simplify the flow building process by making it easier to create flows that connect with and perform actions on third-party systems without requiring additional integration or code. Examples of available Flow Actions include accepting a credit card payment, conducting a credit check, checking the weather forecast, and adding a video player.

There’s no need to wait for the launch of Flow Builder to use Flow Actions. They work today in Cloud Flow Designer. All you need to do is find the Flow Action you need on AppExchange under Flow Solutions, install it, then simply use it. Flow Actions give you the edge you need to assemble industry-specific flows on the fly in order to build seamless, guided, and connected experiences.

Some examples of Flow Actions that our partners have built include:

• Accenture: Generate a quick quote for loan processing
• Advanced Communities: Suggest knowledge articles
• Appinium: View recommended videos
• Chargent: Accept a credit card payment
• Cognizant: Check weather forecast
• GetFeedback: Add a survey
• Oktana: Conduct credit check
• Riva: Save and send on a task
• Taskray: Add a task to a project
• Vidyard: Add a video player
• Vlocity: Run a Vlocity omniscript
• Workato: Integrate to Netsuite
• zAgile: Update Jira and post to Slack
• 7Summits: SlideShare presentation

Blazing trails at Dreamforce ’18?

 

To learn more about Lightning Flow Actions, find us at Dreamforce ’18 at one of the “Lightning Flow Actions: Build Industry-Specific Flows” theater sessions located at the AppExchange Den. Attendees will see partner-built Flow Actions in action. And to learn about what’s on the horizon for Lightning Flow, be sure to check out one of the “Reimagine Declarative App Dev with Lightning Flow” sessions (Tues, 9/25 @ 10 a.m. PST, Thurs, 9/27 @ 3 p.m. PST) at the Moscone West Convention Center.