Get Started with Flow Distribution

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Describe what you should do before you distribute a flow.
  
• List the various ways you can distribute a flow.
  
• Build a simple screen flow.
  

We recommend completing the Screen Flows badge before working on this badge. The Screen Flows badge teaches you how to create screens in your flows.

You’ve toiled for days, maybe even weeks, and finally have a flow worth writing home about. Maybe it keeps users true to the official business process. Maybe it saves users from doing repetitive tasks. Maybe it automates something else entirely. One thing is certain: It saves your users time and your organization money. But at this point it’s just a thing in Salesforce Setup that users don't have access to.

After you finish building and testing your flow, you have yet another decision to make: how to make the flow accessible to your users.

How Do You Distribute Your Flow? Let Us Count the Ways

You can distribute flows in a number of ways, each of which comes with its own set of caveats and considerations to keep in mind. For example, you can put a flow on a Lightning page, and you can put one in a utility bar. Some distribution methods are available only in Lightning Experience. Here’s a list of places where you can put a flow with a screen so users can get to it.

• Lightning pages
  
• Flow actions
  
• Utility bar
  
• Experience Builder page
  
• Custom Lightning components
  
• Visualforce pages
  
• Web tabs
  
• Custom buttons and links
  

And that’s just for flows that have screens. The list grows quite a bit for autolaunched flows, bots, Apex actions, and the API.

In this module, we go through four major use cases for distributing your screen flows and which method is recommended for each of them.

Build a Simple Flow

This module isn’t about creating flows, but it’s hard to show you the world of flow distribution without something to distribute. So let’s create a flow that you can use in the other units of this module. It’s purposefully very simple, with one screen element and one field on that screen. Trust us, these distribution methods work for simple and complex flows alike, so you can use them for your real flows, too.

1. Create a flow.
   
   1. From Setup, enter Flows in the Quick Find box, then select Flows.
      
   2. Click New Flow.
      
   3. Make sure Start from Scratch is selected, and click Next.
      
   4. Select Screen Flow and then click Create.
      
2. Add a Screen element to your flow.
   
   1. On the canvas, click .
      
   2. Click Screen.
      
   3. For Label, enter My Screen.
      
   4. Under Configure Footer, select Hide Previous and Hide Pause.
      
   5. For Next or Finish Button, select Use the standard label.
      
3. Add a Display Text field to your screen.
   
   1. From the Components tab under Display, click Display Text.
      
   2. In the Display Text properties pane, in the API Name field, enter Hello_World.
      
   3. In the textbox, enter Hello, World.
      
   4. Click Done to save the screen.
      
4. Save the flow:
   
   1. Name it Hello World.
      
   2. Make sure its API name is Hello_World.
      
5. From the button bar in Flow Builder, click Activate.
   

The flow is now active.

Make Sure Users Can Run the Flow

Before we get into the specifics of the different ways you can distribute your flow, make sure that your users can actually run it. By default, some distribution methods depend on the Run Flows permission. Add the Run Flows permission to a profile or permission set, and assign that profile or permission set to the right users.

Check out the Flow Implementation II badge for more info on flow permissions.

Resources

• Salesforce Help: Distribute a Flow
• Salesforce Help: Limit User Access to Execute Flows
• Trailhead: Flow Implementation II