The Cloud Flow Designer is Salesforce’s tool in automating your business processes without the use of Apex code. The Flow Designer helps you create business process flowcharts that are useful in guiding you and your colleagues in performing customer-related business tasks. It lest you create a wizard that’ll help in defining actions for certain responses your customer makes in the business process.
This post will give you an overview of how to use Cloud Flow Designer in your own org platform.
Feature Availability
Cloud Flow Designer is available for both Salesforce Classic and Salesforce Lightning Experience users. It can also be found under the Developer, Unlimited, Performance, and enterprise editions.
The User Interface
Building customized workflow without using any code is easily done in Cloud Flow Designer. You simply use a drag-and-drop style to enter various flow elements and build a completed workflow.
Before heading to an overview of the flow creation process, familiarize yourself with the following flow elements under the Cloud Flow Designer user interface:
- Button Bar – This is located on the topmost part of the interface box. It contains buttons that let you save, run, close, undo, copy, and paste elements of your workflow. The right side of the bar shows the status of your current workflow project.
- Canvas – This is the large blank part of the interface where you may drop elements of your flow. You’ll see a visual diagram of your workflow as you continue adding elements to it in the Canvas.
- Palette – This tab on the left-hand portion of the interface contains elements that you can drag to the Canvas. You may choose to add Data, Logic, Screen and many other elements to your workflow.
- Resources – This is the tab next to Palette. This tab contains resources like formulas and variables that you can also use in your flow creation.
- Explorer – The last tab next to Resources is used to view a collection of the elements and resources that you’ve used in building your current workflow.
A Quick Guide to Creating Your First Flow
Here is an overview of the steps you need to follow in creating your first work flow.
- Go to Setup.
- Locate the Build option on the screen’s left-hand corner.
- Select Workflows and Approvals.
- Choose Flows. The Flows box will appear. Click on the New Flow button.
- You will then be taken to the Cloud Flow Designer interface.
- A helpful video tutorial will appear if it is your first time to use the Cloud Flow Designer. After watching, you’ll be left with a blank Canvas and tools in the left side of your screen.
- Select Step Draft tool from the Palette and sketch out a draft of your flow design.
- From there, you can add elements and specify their actions through dialog boxes that will prompt you to make choices for each element you add.
You are now free to identify your flow’s starting point, add record lookups, make decisions and outcomes, create loops, and add or delete needed records. Save your flow afterwards.
The Cloud Flow Designer is a useful tool in making relevant business workflows that automate your work processes. It’s easy to use because you simple need to drag and drop several elements and configure their actions in the flow, instead of starting a workflow from Apex code scratch.