Releases / Admins / Developers / Flow

10 New Flow Features in Salesforce Winter ’25

By Tim Combridge

Every time the Salesforce release notes are published, I jump straight to the Salesforce Flow section – there’s always so much great content there that will make the lives of Salesforce Admins a lot easier.

The Winter ‘25 update has introduced some wonderful new features as well as the usual quality-of-life improvements that come with each release, all of which are worth shouting about! Here’s my summary of all that’s “coming soon” to Salesforce Flow…

1. Build Good Flows With New Tips

I remember being absolutely lost when I first started to learn how to build flows back in 2016, and this new feature would’ve been a brilliant help. Winter ‘25 introduces tips that guide you on creating well-architected flows and help you avoid some easy mistakes.

In the example above, I’ve put an Update element inside a Loop – seasoned Flow builders know this is a no-no. Now, newcomers to Flow can have this guidance delivered to them right where it is needed: within the Flow Builder itself.

READ MORE: Identify Inefficient Flow Designs with New Tips

2. Further Enhancements to the Create Records Element

Summer ‘24 gave us the ability to “upsert” records using the Create element, and Winter ‘25 expands upon this in a major way. 

In the Summer ‘24 release, we were introduced to the ability to match existing records, but this was quite cumbersome. In Winter ‘25, you are able to match based on data in existing Flow variables or collection variables, not just from manually mapped variables.

READ MORE: Create or Update Records Efficiently with the Create Records Element

3. Upgraded Flow Security – Enforced Release Update

This one is less of a feature and more of a security improvement, but worth noting regardless. The Run Flows permission has been killed off, and you’ll need to ensure that users have been granted direct access to the Flows that they need to run. This can be done using Permission Sets (recommended) or Profiles.

READ MORE: Restrict User Access to Run Flows

4. Send Email Enhancements (CC and BCC)

When sending emails using the Send Email Action in Flow, you can gather a series of CC and BCC email addresses and assign them in the new BCC Recipient Address List and CC Recipient Address List in Flow. 

You can also set an additional 145 email recipients, bringing the grand total to 150 recipients. 

READ MORE: Expand Your Email Reach by Using CC and BCC Options in Send Email Action

5. Choice Lookup Supports Multiple Options

Winter ‘25 brings the ability to make multiple selections in Choice Lookup fields in Screen Flow. This means that it is now possible to select multiple values in the Choice Lookup field instead of one, making it similar to the standard Lookup component.

READ MORE: Select Multiple Choices with Choice Lookup Component

6. Errors and Warnings Menu

Errors now get their own dedicated menu within Flow Builder. If you’ve written a formula incorrectly or forgotten to provide a value somewhere in your Flow you will now see it in this new menu.

Additionally, the Auto-Layout and Freeform toggle has been moved to the left-hand side of the menu bar next to the new Errors and Warnings menu.

READ MORE: Troubleshoot Configuration Issues Systematically with the Errors and Warning Pane

7. Updated Save Menu

There have been some changes to the way Flows are saved inside the Builder. Now you can save your Flow, as well as Save As a new version or new Flow from a dropdown button rather than the legacy popup modal. 

Another small change that saves a few seconds here and there that will add up to a more productive day!

8. Flow Action Buttons are Generally Available

One of the biggest enhancements in the previous Summer ‘24 release was the introduction of Flow Action Buttons.

Winter ‘25 moves these to Generally Available, removing the beta flag and also adding the ability for these buttons to be disabled.

READ MORE: Provide a Better Screen Flow Experience with Action Buttons

9. Flow Repeater Enhancements

The Repeater component for Screen Flow has been upgraded allowing you to prepopulate data and present it to users within the Flow instead of requiring them to create the data.

READ MORE: Collect User Input to Modify a List of Records from a Screen

Additionally, you can now control whether users can add their own items or not, and whether they can remove prepopulated items or not which essentially allows for a read-only Repeater in addition to the editable one.

If only we had an editable Data Table component in addition to the read-only one…

10. Flow Transform Element Enhancements

Winter ‘25 delivers enhancements to the Transform element that a lot of Flow enthusiasts have been waiting for – additional data types are now available to be used as Target Data values.

Previously, users were restricted to just Record and Apex-Defined, but now they have as many options as there are variable types; a very useful upgrade.

BONUS: Einstein Generative AI for Flow Updates

I’m upset that I don’t have Einstein in my preview org… some of these updates look incredible, and I’d love to get my hands on them. Winter ‘25 enables users to get help with creating formulas within Flows and provides the ability to change the prompt that you used to create a new Flow.

There are also enhancements to Prompt Flows – you can now launch Prompt Flows as Subflows within other Prompt Flows – Prompt Flow-ception! Modular Prompt Flows allow for a much cleaner automation architecture.

Fear not, the human element of the Flow building journey isn’t being replaced quite yet! However, these new tools are definitely going to save us a bunch of time and headaches. Always good to see generative AI making its way into our workflows more and more!

Summary

Winter ‘25 includes a symphony of substantial enhancements to our favorite tool – Salesforce Flow. Once again, there’s a nice ratio of minor enhancements and quality improvements to the more impactful new features and functionality. 

These new features are bound to make your job as an admin, developer, or business user much easier and streamlined once they’ve been implemented throughout your org.

Don’t forget to sign up for a pre-release org to take these new features for a spin!

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The Author

Tim Combridge

Tim is the Managing Director at Sensible Giraffe, passionately educating others via high-quality blog content and training courses including the Ultimate Salesforce Flow Foundation Course.

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Comments:

    ZS
    August 15, 2024 5:07 pm
    Hey Tim, I would clarify point 3: Upgraded Flow Security – Enforced Release Update. According to this https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=release-notes.rn_automate_flow_release_update_restrict_user_access.htm&release=252&type=5 users do not need direct access to flows unless you want to be that granular: After you enable Restrict User Access to Run Flows, all users must be granted access to run a flow. Add the Run Flows permission to a permission set. For more granular access control, restrict specific flow access to an available permission set.