The recommended best practice in Salesforce with process builders was to try to build one process per object; this practice was to maximize speed and efficiency. Now with the sun setting on both process builders and workflows. I wanted to explore this for a while. With the retirement of the aforementioned features now would be a good time to delve into this. The question is does this still ring true when using flows so let’s look at this in more detail below.
Processing
Process builders have brought a great deal of power to Salesforce using clicks not codes. However, it was always seen as resource hungry; you very well may have never run across an issue with record locking until you started using these in conjunction with managed packages or custom Apex running in the background. Flows have benchmarked as faster and lighter especially with the before save flows operating similarly to workflows. I’ve always found that just loading up process builders seemed slow.
Salesforce benchmarks are provided from multiple experiments which I’ve read through which you can see on Salesforce Architects. Speaking from my own personal experience of developing and deploying solutions in salesforce. I have also included some of the benchmark figures in this article discussing workflows.
Features
Unlike workflow rules which do simple things quickly, process builders are fairly powerful and match a lot of companies’ needs for automation from creating and updating related records. Requirements like automatically creating an onboarding case when an opportunity goes Closed Won or a shipping order are relatively simple to put in place. You can use them to trigger invokable process builders and to launch auto-launched flows.
Having said all this though you can do all this with flows. I did however find loading up and adding additional changes to processes sometimes seemed pretty slow.
Complexity
Workflows and process builders are both seen as simple tools to do simple tasks and while this rings true for Workflow, process builders have the ability to create and update records. Though the tree layout was meant to be intuitive I have struggled with larger trees. Flows have an auto layout that seems to fit email alerts and simpler automation. I personally prefer controlling the layout so rarely opt for the auto layout. I believe laying it out how you would with a flow chart makes it easier to read, especially when using screens.
Migrating to Flows
Since the announcement of the retirement of workflows and process builders, there has been an option to migrate flows. Using the Migrate to Flows which I will cover in greater detail in a future article is very simple. Process builders have been a good friend in our efforts to give streamlined and effective automation. You can clearly see the foundations of Process builders paved the way for flows. You have been able to view process builders in flow format for several years.
