Most people still have to wait a couple of days for Christmas to arrive, but for us at UPEO it came early. Salesforce opened up the Spring ‘22 pre-release orgs, which means we get to dive into all the new features it brings. As Flow-aficionados there are a couple of things in there that make us happy and the guys at unofficialsf.com already beat us to the punch and wrote up an excellent post on the new Flow features, which I highly recommend you take a look at. One of the coolest things in there is that we can now control the order in which Flows are executed. Our colleague Uma called it “life changing” and we couldn’t agree more.
For us and for the types of projects we work on, there is one feature that we’re particularly excited about, and that’s the ability to migrate Workflows to Flows. This feature is still in Beta, so it’s subject to change and its actual implementation may change before it ends up in production, but we took it for a test drive nevertheless.
In order to test it, we spun up a new developer org, and went ahead and created some Workflows on Contact. The first thing that popped out is that you’re prompted to create a Flow rather than a Workflow, which further reinforces the idea that Workflows are becoming a thing of the past.
For our tests, we created a number of Workflow rules and actions and then tried to convert them to Flows. The results were a bit hit and miss. Our criteria based workflows were converted pretty consistently, even when the Workflow contained multiple field updates and email alerts or time-dependent actions.
Sadly, it wasn’t all rainbows and sprinkles:
- If the Rule Criteria contain a Formula, the conversion won’t work
- If the Workflow Actions creates a Task, the conversion won’t work
- If you’re evaluating a derived value for some standa rd fields, the conversion won’t work
Of course, these were just a couple of test cases and the real test will come when we try this in an actual org with actual workflows. But for now our take-away is that this conversion method will be extremely useful as a stepping stone towards getting your point-and-click automations running in Flows, but that there will still be significant work in converting your existing workflows to Flows.
However, as we said in a previous blog post, if you’re just thinking of just lifting and shifting all your Workflows, we advise you to take a minute out of your day and contact us. The work that comes with converting your existing automations to Flows does not have to be a sunk cost. It can, and should, be an opportunity to stop and think for a second on how you’re actually using the platform and to make sure you’re still using it in the best way possible for your business.
So, If you would like to know more about how UPEO can help you pivot from Workflow and Process Builder to Flow, or if you want our help in assessing your current use of the platform, get in touch with us. We’d love to share our experience with you and help you avoid the pitfalls we painstakingly discovered ourselves.