Consider an instance when there is no trigger to launch a flow as we see in record triggered flows and schedule triggered flows, nor there is any user interaction like we have in screen flow. In such scenarios, we can use Autolaunched flow (no trigger). It can be called as a subflow within a flow when you want to do the same set of actions that should be run on record changes of different objects.
Autolaunched flow (no trigger) is a flow which:
- Do not require user intervention
- Does not use screens, local actions, choices or choice sets.
- Deployed with the following:
- Processes
- Custom Apex classes
- REST API
- Flow Orchestration
- Web tabs
- Custom buttons or custom links
- Visualforce pages
- Can run in either user or system context.
- In Lightning page, it will run in user context.
- With buttons and links, it will run in user context.
- If called by a process, it will run in system context
- Autolaunched flows can be launched as subflows. They can be called from other flows or processes.
- When variables are created in Autolaunched flows, the ‘Available to input’ checkbox must be checked off to fetch input values from those flows/processes which calls the Autolaunched subflow.
- ‘Available for output’ checkbox can be opted in cases where the variable is to be used inside the calling process/flow.
Inorder to make the flows we built less complicated, we should minimize the no of automation steps we use within the flow. So calling a subflow which already have the inbuilt automation we needed for our present flow is highly useful. Autolaunched flows are used in such type of scenarios. Let us see an instance where an autolaunched flow is used.
Consider a case where you need to create a contact for an account. You may have many other things to do other than creating a contact in the flow you are going to build. All those tasks can be automated with the help of a process/ flow. But within that flow/process, when you are in a need to create contact under an account, you can simply call the subflow instead of creating the steps from scratch.
These are the steps involved:
- Create an Autolaunched flow for creating Contacts.
- Save it and Activate.
- Create a process.
- Set the criteria based on your requirements.
- For ‘Actions’, choose ‘Flows’ as the action type.
- Give an Action name
- Find the name of the Autolaunched flow you created in Step 1 from the list of Flows.
- Click Save.
- Activate (You can have additional steps to this flow according to your automation requirements).
Autolaunched flows can be invoked from other flow types by choosing the ‘Subflow’ interaction element. You can learn more about flow builder and the different flow types by clicking here Flow Builder (salesforce.com).
Looking for more use cases to build using autolaunched flows, leave us a message.
Take Five Consulting is a technology company, based in Virginia U.S., that specializes in the Mortgage Banking vertical especially LOS implementation and application development. Take Five Consulting creates and implement mortgage technology and software specifically for Mortgage Industry.
