A Flow is Salesforce’s visual automation tool — a drag-and-drop canvas where you assemble logic, decisions, screens, and data operations into a runnable program. In 2026 it’s the default declarative automation engine on the platform, replacing Workflow Rules and Process Builder.
What a flow can do
- Show screens to users — wizards, forms, intake processes
- React to record changes — replaces Process Builder and Workflow
- Run on a schedule — replaces scheduled Apex for declarative use cases
- React to platform events — event-driven automation
- Be called from Apex, Lightning, REST APIs — autolaunched flows are first-class subroutines
- Call Apex, send email, post to Chatter, submit for approval — every legacy action is available
- Loop, branch, store variables — proper programming primitives
The canvas elements
| Element | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Screen | Show a UI to the user (Screen Flow only) |
| Action | Invoke an external service: email, Apex, post to Chatter |
| Subflow | Call another flow |
| Assignment | Set a value in a variable |
| Decision | Branch based on conditions |
| Loop | Iterate over a collection |
| Get Records | SOQL query |
| Create / Update / Delete Records | DML |
| Roll Back | Abort and undo |
The 2026 flow types
There are five types you’ll pick from when creating a new flow:
- Screen Flow — user-facing wizards
- Record-Triggered Flow — runs on insert/update/delete of a record
- Schedule-Triggered Flow — cron-style recurring
- Platform Event-Triggered Flow — subscribes to platform events
- Autolaunched Flow — no trigger; called by Apex, REST, subflows
(See the next question for the breakdown.)
Why Flow replaced Workflow + Process Builder
- One tool to learn instead of three
- Better debug experience — live debug logs, step-through
- Better performance — before-save flows run inside the trigger transaction, eliminating extra DML
- More capabilities — loops, screens, scheduled paths, platform events
- Better testing — Flow has built-in test scaffolding (Spring ‘24+)
- Better deployment — flows are first-class metadata, easier to source-control
Where Flow falls short
- Very high record-volume operations — Apex is still faster
- Complex transactional control — for example, fine-grained savepoint/rollback semantics
- Recursive logic without runaway protection — flows have run-time limits that can be hit
For those cases, you reach for Apex.
What interviewers want
- A clean definition: visual automation tool, replaces Workflow and Process Builder
- Acknowledgement of the five flow types
- The before-save vs after-save distinction in Record-Triggered Flows (huge for performance)
Related
- How many types of flow are there?
- Screen Flow vs Auto-Launched Flow
Verified against: Salesforce Help — Flow Builder. Last reviewed 2026-05-17 for Spring ‘26 release.