Add Screens to Your Flow

Most standard input components request a value like a number or a paragraph of text. For Radio Buttons, Picklist, Checkbox Group, and Multi-Select Picklist components, the user instead chooses from a set of options. To identify the available options, select at least one choice or choice set resource.

• A record choice set generates multiple options by using a filtered list of records.
• A picklist choice set generates multiple options by using the values of a picklist or multi-select picklist field.
• A choice represents a single option with the label and value set manually.

Tip

We recommend using a choice resource only when you can’t use either of the other two. Record choice sets and picklist choice sets are easier to configure and don’t require as much maintenance.

There’s one more important consideration for screen components: which flow runtime experience they’re supported in.

Flows have two different runtime experiences: Lightning runtime and Classic runtime. Like its name suggests, Lightning runtime looks and feels like Lightning Experience, while Classic runtime looks and feels like Visualforce.

That said, the two runtime experiences aren’t tied to either desktop experience. You can use Lightning runtime in Salesforce Classic, and you can use Classic runtime in Lightning Experience.

Note

We’re no longer enhancing Classic runtime, so if you want to take advantage of enhancements to how flow screens work, use Lightning runtime.

All screen components are supported in Lightning runtime, but not all screen components are supported in Classic runtime. Here are three indicators that a component requires Lightning runtime.

• The component icon is a lightning bolt.
• No preview is available for the component.

  

• A warning that a screen component requires Lightning runtime appears when the flow is saved.

  

First, let’s look at the Name component.

• The component isn’t disabled, nor is it read-only.
• The component displays fields for only First Name and Last Name. (The Name component can also display other name fields like Middle Name.) If your project’s Name component displayed a field for Salutation, the options would be Mr., Mrs., and Ms.
• The label for the component is Name.

You need to be able to reference the user-entered values for First Name and Last Name in other parts of the flow. With the Name component, the only way to reference the entered values is by storing the values in variables. Enter the Store Output Values section.

The First Name and Last Name values are stored in fields on the {!contact} record variable.

Next, let’s look at Account, which is a Picklist component.

• The component label is Account (1).
• The component supports only Text choices and choice sets (2).
• The choices are generated using the “accounts” record choice set (3).

You don’t have to manually store the value of the selected choice in a variable. Instead, you can reference the screen component by its API name (Account). When the user selects an account, the screen component is set to the selected choice’s value. Based on how we configured the record choice set, the choice value is the selected account’s ID.

Last up, the Toggle component.

• The text displayed next to the toggle is, “If this contact already exists, update the existing record.”
• When the toggle is activated, its label is Update existing.
• Otherwise, the toggle label is Create other contact.

Like the Name component, you need to also use the toggle value in other parts of the flow. In the Store Output Values section, the toggle value is stored in a Boolean variable called {!updateExisting}. The variable must be Boolean because the toggle value is the equivalent of true or false.