In Spring ’19, Salesforce is replacing the flash Cloud Flow Designer tool for creating flows with the new non-Flash Flow Builder.
Cloud Flow Designer:
Flow Builder:
While the preference is for you to create/manage your flows in the new Flow Builder, for the time being, you do have the option to manage or create flows in the older design, Cloud Flow Designer. You will need to go to the Process Automation Settings screen and deselect “Disable access to Cloud Flow Designer.” This option is checked by default with the Spring ’19 upgrade.
There are some known gaps in the first version of Flow Builder from Cloud Flow Designer. I expect that these gaps will be addressed in the upcoming releases.
- No ability to copy/paste, undo or redo flow elements
No ability to move multiple flow elements at a time— According to Shannon Hale from the Salesforce Process Automation team, “To move multiple elements in Flow Builder at the same time by using Shift+Click to add elements to your selection, and then clicking in any of the selected elements and dragging.” Thank you, Shannon, for sharing!- No rich text editor
- New resources created in a flow element are not automatically attached after the resource is created
Here are some of the high level differences/improvements between the two UI tools that you should be aware of. To perform a deeper drive into the differences, I will be publishing a couple of blog posts that show a flow created in Cloud Flow Designer and what it looks like in Flow Builder. Be on the lookout for those.
Under the User Interface category, the UI for the Screen has changed.
Screen – Cloud Flow Designer:
Screen – Flow Builder:
Under the Logic Category, the flow elements are pretty much the same except “Wait” has been renamed to “Pause.”
Decision flow element – Cloud Flow Designer:
Decision – Flow Builder:
Assignment – Cloud Flow Designer:
Assignment – Flow Builder:
Loop – Cloud Flow Designer:
Loop – Flow Designer:
Under the Data Category, you will see the most change. Instead of Record Create and Fast Create, Record Update and Fast Update, Record Lookup and Fast Lookup and lastly, Record Delete and Fast Delete, the flow elements have been consolidated down to Create Records, Update Records, Get Records and Delete Records, respectively. You do not need to figure whether to use the Record or Fast Data flow element anymore!
Record Create and Fast Create – Cloud Flow Builder:
Create Records – Flow Builder:
Record Update and Fast Update – Cloud Flow Builder:
Update Records – Flow Builder:
Record Lookup and Fast Lookup – Cloud Flow Builder:
Get Records – Flow Builder:
Record Delete and Fast Delete – Cloud Flow Designer:
Delete Record – Flow Builder:
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The other flow elements, which were shown in separate categories in Cloud Flow Designer (i.e. subflows in flows, email alerts, quick actions, local actions, apex and static actions), they are grouped into Core Action, Apex Action (Legacy), Apex Action, Email Alert and Subflow. Under Core Action, you will find the Static Actions, Quick Actions and Local Actions.
Lastly, the flow resources
that were created from the Palette tab and stored in the Resources tab in Cloud Flow Designer are now found just in the Manager tab.
When you create a new resource in Flow Builder, you select the Resource Type to create.
Here are some minor changes:
- If you need to create a sObject data type, select Variable but also select “Record” Data Type.
- If you are looking to create a “Dynamic Record” Choice, this is now “Record Choice Set.”
- If you are looking to create a “Picklist Choice” resource, this is now a“Picklist Choice Set.”
Try out the new Flow Builder in your Spring ’19 sandbox today!
Jenwlee's Salesforce Blog 
Hey Jen – thanks for the great post!
One thing: you can actually move multiple elements in Flow Builder at the same time by using Shift+Click to add elements to your selection, and then clicking in any of the selected elements and dragging.
We’ll be working on better discoverability for these shortcuts in the next release.
Thanks,
Shannon Hale
Senior Director of Product – Salesforce.com
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Great post. Thank you!
Until the new Flow Builder is stable, happy to have a way to revert to the former release.
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Thank you, Trevor
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If we open an existing flow, it will open in Flow Builder. Then what happens to the Fast Create/ Fast Update actions that we are used in the flow? Do they get auto converted to Record Create or do we have to update each one of them manually?
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If we open an existing flow that was built in Flow Designer, it will open up in Flow Builder. Then what happens to the ‘Fast Create or Fast Update’ actions that are used in the flow? Do they get auto converted to ‘Create Records’ or do we have to update each one of them manually?
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They get converted automatically
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They get converted automatically
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