Salesforce Retires Workflow Rules and Process Builder

For many Salesforce organizations, Workflow Rules and Process Builder have been the workhorses of business logic for years. They have powered simple field updates, email alerts, and multi-step processes. However, their fragmentation, architectural limitations, and occasional performance issues necessitated a unified path forward.

The End of an Era and the Start of a Migration

The timeline for this transition is firm. While existing Workflow Rules and Process Builders will continue to run for a period, Salesforce will cease providing official support and bug fixes for these features. Furthermore, the ability to create new automations in these legacy tools is being phased out. The deadline for this shift is imminent, underscoring the urgency for all Salesforce customers to develop a comprehensive migration strategy.

The message from Salesforce is clear: all new automation should be built in Flow Builder, and existing automations must be migrated to avoid running on an unsupported platform. If you are unfamiliar with Flow Builder, contact the US-based team of Salesforce Consultants at KeyNode Solutions to learn more about this transition and how we can help you.

Why Flow Builder is the Future of Automation

The move to Flow Builder is more than just a required update; it’s an opportunity to modernize your processes and leverage significantly enhanced capabilities. Flow Builder represents a massive leap in automation power, offering features that were simply not possible in the legacy tools:

• User Interaction: Unlike its predecessors, Flow enables the creation of Screen Flows, which guide users through complex, multi-step processes via a custom interface.
• Greater Flexibility and Complexity: Flow can handle intricate business logic, including loops, collections and complex data manipulation, often removing the need for custom Apex code.
• Superior Performance: Flow Builder, especially with its ‘Before Save’ record-triggered flows, executes far faster and more efficiently than Process Builder, greatly reducing the risk of hitting system limits.
• Advanced Features: Flow supports record deletion (a major limitation of Process Builder), robust error handling, scheduled triggers, and the ability to easily integrate with external systems via HTTP callouts.

Action Steps for Salesforce Admins and Developers

If your organization relies on Workflow Rules or Process Builder, now is the time to act. Delaying the migration only increases technical debt and future risk.

1. Inventory Your Automations: Audit your org to identify all active Workflow Rules and Process Builders. Salesforce provides tools, like the Flow Migration Tool (in beta), to help simplify this discovery.
2. Plan and Consolidate: Review the identified processes. Eliminate any that are redundant or obsolete. Best practices recommend consolidating multiple automations into a single, object-specific Flow to optimize the order of execution and overall performance.
3. Utilize Migration Resources: While the automated tool is useful for simple Workflow Rules, complex Process Builders often require a manual, strategic rebuild within Flow Builder to ensure the logic is optimized and adheres to best practices.
4. Upskill on Flow: Admins and developers must embrace the Flow Builder methodology. Trailhead and community resources are vital for understanding flow types, debugging, and performance best practices.

The retirement of Workflow Rules and Process Builder marks a significant evolution of the Salesforce platform. By embracing Flow Builder, organizations can future-proof their automation, boost system performance and unlock a new level of process flexibility.

The dedicated team of Salesforce experts at KeyNode Solutions uses a combination of extensive experience and AI to help effectively solve issues in reduced time and cost. If you have any questions about the transition to Flow Builder contact us at hello@keynodesolutions.com or call us at 1-858-215-5371.