In conversations, I have had with business users who do some light admin work. I have been asked what Flow is? Is it any different to Workflow rules? If I had not had these conversations I would forget to take into consideration that, not everyone uses Salesforce the same or may have used it at a time before flows had jumped up in popularity and flexibility.
It still rings true the old saying though “why fix what isn’t broken”. Perhaps all of your automation has been handled with workflows and process builders and you’ve not needed to change them why would you? Maybe the org they are using uses a very streamlined process that sends a handful of email alerts and updates a few fields.
Side By Side
When asking the question are Flows the same as Workflow rules? Well again as with most of these things It depends. It can do the simple things that workflows do and it can offer so much more. Using invokable apex to do some things you cannot do without code like a random number generator is also one of the features. I’ve provided below a by no means an extensive list of the features for flows.
| Workflow Rules | Flows |
| Send Emails Update Fields on Record Triggering Record Create Tasks Send Outbound Messages | Send Emails Update Fields on Triggering Record Create Tasks Update Fields on Related Objects Update Fields on Non-Related Objects Create Records Delete Records |
As you can see Flow Builder is a different kind of beast altogether through the interactive screen flow and timed scheduled flows with the latter acting in the same way as the scheduled Apex. Screen flow is such a stand-out tool in its own right. I have personally used it for complex surveys, guided record creation, and being able to be extended further with lightning components for deeper dive into screen flow click here.
Flows will keep evolving further and further into the realms of development. This vastly increases the number of instances that no code/low code solutions can be offered through Salesforce for both clients and consultancies.
Performance
One of the biggest differences you will notice is the before-save flows which allow you to do recursive updates to that record and taken from tests conducted by Salesforce available here if you want to read the whole article.
The average overhead of a before save flow was 1.16 milliseconds vs the 16.76 milliseconds for Workflow rules. They have been observed to bring down the process builder average from 150.46 milliseconds to 115.58 when it uses a process builder to launch an automated flow. With an even further drop down to 98.56 milliseconds when a process builder is totally replaced with After-Save Flow. This is based on [Experiment 1] Single trigger; single record created from the UI; Apex debugs log duration.
Conclusion
Whilst this was a fairly light overview of some of the differences and performance. I feel like I have hardly touched the surface. In my humble opinion flows are not the same as workflow rules. They are more akin to an evolution of workflow rules. If you haven’t yet started using them I would recommend checking out my tutorial part 1 and part 2 for creating contacts on an account.
