For those of you who have created Visual Flow screens with dynamic record choice, ever want to return more information than a single field from the object to distinguish a record from another?
For example, if you are showing a list of contact names, the search can return multiple Jennifer Lee’s. How do you know you are picking the right Jennifer Lee? You need more information from the contact record, such as email address, account, mailing address, or all the above, right? Unfortunately, flow only gives you the ability to show one field on the object to return for display purposes.
The animated image below shows a contact search screen using the name field and a Select a Contact screen with the dynamic record choice configuration using the contact’s name. In this example, when we return the contact name only, you cannot distinguish one “Jennifer Lee” from another.
In this case, the business wanted to see the following as the search results:
Contact’s name | associated Account | contact’s email address | contact’s state
What are we to do?!
No worries. #PawsomeAdmin Addison Dogster, system administrator of Universal Containers, to the rescue. She figured a workaround for this!
Addison creates a custom formula field in the Contact object, which specifies what will display in the dynamic record choice results.
Contact’s name | associated Account | contact’s email address | contact’s state
In the formula area, we selected the standard FirstName, LastName, Email and Mailing State fields along with a reference to the Account Name field. Then, we inserted spacers using ” ” or the pipe with a spacer ” | ”
Best Practice Tip: Don’t forget to provide a description so you and other/future admins know what this custom field is used for. As shown in the screenshot below, I mention that this is used in flow dynamic record choice.
Don’t forget to set the FLS appropriately for the profiles who will be using this flow. Otherwise, the contact search results will not show in the flow for them. Do not add this to your contact page layouts. this is only used for the flow dynamic record choice purposes.
Now, go back to the flow and reference the Contact Search custom formula field instead of the standard Name field for enhanced contact search results.
Voila! Better search results!
You may notice in the two animated gifs that I made changes to my flow by just saving the flow and the clicking the “Run” button. This allows me to step through my flow configuration without having to activate the flow, then make changes, activate a new version, etc. By doing this, it will cut down on the gazillion flow versions. You may also notice that in running the flow, it is rendered in the Classic flow skin, not the Lightning flow skin. Not to worry, if you are using this flow in Lightning Experience, it will display in the Lightning skin.
Jenwlee's Salesforce Blog 
Is there any chance of getting the screenshots? The GIF moves too fast and I can’t follow it. Thank you.
LikeLike
The main purpose of this blog post is to show you can show more information by pulling in a custom field that uses a formula to show your end results so you will configure your dynamic record choice but use the custom formula field instead.
LikeLike