As I was making my way through the Summer ’21 Release Notes and read through
the Salesforce Flow-hancements (see what I did there?) I couldn’t wait to share these with you before I publish the rest of my Summer ’21 Highlights – watch for those to come soon.
All features apply to both Lightning and Classic, unless otherwise noted.
Note: These features are not listed in any particular order.
1.Flow Builder Enhancements:
A.(Generally Available) Build Multi-Column Screens in Flow Builder.
B. Use Is Changed operator in the Start in a Record Triggered Update After Save Flow and in Decision Elements. The IsChanged element is available in the Start Element in record triggered update after save flows. You can also use the Is Changed operator with a $Record global variable in a Decision Element.
C. Use IsChanged, IsNew and PriorValue Formula Functions in Your Record Triggered New and Updated Flows. Use the $Record global variable to use the IsChanged, IsNew and PriorValue formulas like you do in processes and workflow rules.
D. Set Default Value for a Picklist or Record Choice Component via Any Flow Resource or Manually Select. No more workaround of creating a choice resource to set the default value.
E. Control Over Picklist Requiredness in Flow Screens. “—None—” will be added to each picklist option list. The picklist no longer defaults to the first item in the picklist by default. A required checkbox will also be available in the picklist component.
F. Set the Default Value for a Flow Screen Picklist. You can now set the default value either by a flow resource, such as a static choice, or manually entering the value in the Default Value field. For multi-select picklists, if you manually enter the default value, separate the values by a semi-colon.
G. Switch Between Checkbox Group and Multi-Select Picklist or Picklist and Radio Buttons Without Starting Over. No need to start over again if you want to switch the style of your list items from checkbox group to multi-select picklist when users can select multiple items and between picklist and radio buttons for a single select item.
H. (Beta) Add Fields from Objects Directly On Flow Screens. No need to re-create them and then modify the attributes to mimic the object field. They automatically bring over the field attributes. This feature is currently in Beta. The data types available are checkbox, text, date, date/time, number, text area and text area (long).
I. Sort and Limit the Records With a Collection Sort Element. You can specify how to sort the records in a collection multiple ways and also specify to only keep a certain number of the records in the collection for use.
J. (Beta) Create Scheduled Paths on Auto-Layout. Previously, you could only created scheduled paths in freeform layout.
K. Preview More Items in the Flow Canvas. These components are now available for preview: Address, Call Script, Dependent Picklist, Email, Display Image, File Upload, Lookup, Name, Phone, Slider, Toggle, and URL. Previously, you needed to view the components when running the flow or in debug mode only.
L. Specify to Update the Record That Fired Off the Record Triggered and Scheduled Flow. No more setting up the filter criteria for the record in order to update it. Now, you can just select the record that triggered the flow.
M. (Beta) Build Flows on Larger Auto-Layout Canvas. The new flow canvas is 5x larger to handle more complex flows.
N. The Component Visibility Icon is Now Shown in Flow Screens. No need to have to drill into the Component Visibility section of each flow component to see if component visibility is configured. Instead, look for the eye icon, just like in Lightning App Builder.
2. Flow Debugging Enhancements:
A. Debug Record Triggered Flows! Use the Skip start condition to use a record that doesn’t meet the conditions of the Start Element. You can run the flow as another user, set it to rollback mode. You can also specify the record to run.
B. Access the Paused and Failed Flow Interviews to View Failed Flows in Setup. No more looking for the flow fault email in the mailbox of the person who last modified the flow or who’s email is listed in the apex exception list. Failed screen flows, record triggered flows, scheduled flows and auto-launched flows not triggered will appear in the list view and open up in Flow Builder when clicked to the place it failed.
C. Debug Flows After the Pause Elements. When you are debugging a flow that has a pause element, you can continue debugging by setting the pause configuration. Previously, the debugger just stopped once it got to a pause element.
D. Debug a Flow to See When Transactions are Committed in Scheduled and Autolaunch Flows. If a flow faults, you can see whether the record change was committed to the database. There are some committed transactions that will not be shown. See the Release Notes for the exception list.
E. You Can Now Debug Flows in Auto-Layout Like You Can in Free-Form Layout.
F. One Debug Button to Debug Flows. No need to decide between debug on canvas or debug.
3. Flow and Process API Version 52.0: Here are the items covered in the most recent API version.
A. Sort and limit data in a collection with the Collection Sort element.
B. Filter system fields or other read-only fields when creating or updating records.
C. Get merge field improvements in flows. Field level access is now enforced making load time for merge fields referenced on formulas perform faster. If there is a merge field not supported, an error message is shown.
D. Automatically prepend “–None–” to Picklist components at run-time.
Jenwlee's Salesforce Blog 
Thanks for the detail here! I have a couple of questions on the new functionality:
1. For the required picklists, it says -none- will be added to all picklists. Is this going to be a setting per picklist, a global setting, or just something salesforce turns on with the release? We have 100s of flow screen picklists where we added -none- as an option. Will we suddenly have duplicate values?
2. For the object fields in the flow screen, will these display the values on the record if using flow to edit an existing record, or do we still need to add record variable default values?
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Keith, for #1, I think there may be duplicates. I recommend you testing this out when your sandbox upgrades to Summer 21. I don’t have any flows where I manually added a –None– item to verify. For #2, the object fields only take on the field attributes. You will still need to set default values if you are using screen flow to edit a record.
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Hi Keith – I can address #1. For exactly this reason, we made the automatic “–None–” option a versioned update.
* Any net new flows you add will automatically have the –None– option on all picklists – just like on record pages today.
* Existing flows will behave like they did in Spring 21 (no –None–) until you upgrade the Runtime API version.
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For #2, if you do a Get Records before the screen and use the resulting record variable as the context of your object fields, we use that record’s values as the “default value” for the fields. You’ll see this live in the Release Readiness Live demos.
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For the Flow picklists “–None–” addition; will that be auto-enabled with the release in my Flows or will I have to re-activate them? Our sandbox received the summer 21 release, and I still see the first value of a picklist as the default choice in my Flow screens.
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Any flow created with API version 52 will have the new feature. Any flow API version 51 or less will not have this feature.
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