It’s Valentine’s Day! It’s a day where we celebrate love all around the world, and with that in mind I thought I’d share a post sharing five of the things I love about Flow! In this post I will share five of the things that I think are really cool when it comes to using Flow. This list is not necessarily an exhaustive one, but it should be a brief and fun read. As per usual, I’d love to hear your thoughts on what you love most about Flow. So let me know your thoughts in the responses below or in the comments on LinkedIn or Twitter.
#1: The Ability to Stand Out from the Crowd
Let’s call it like it is … if you work as a Salesforce professional and are highly proficient in Flow you’re going to stand out. I say this because while many Salesforce professionals have at beginner level knowledge of Flow and process automation as a whole, the number of Salesforce professionals with intermediate or advanced level skills are significantly lower. So I raise this point first in the aim of highlighting how being proficient at Flow will help you stand out from the crowd. It is something you can really leverage.
At the time of writing in 2023, more and more Admin job specs are asking for Flow skills in the professional applying for the role. So if you can state accurately that you are competent with Flow on your CV (or Resume) then you may actually put yourself in a more appealing position to prospective employers. Truthfully this ability to stand out will (hopefully) decrease ever so slightly over time as more Salesforce Adminstrators learn mor about Flow ahead of the 2025 retirement of Workflow Rules and Process Builder.
But for right now, if you can legitimately claim to have a high level of skill in and around Flow you’ll stand out above the crowd.
#2: The Never Stopping Learning Curve
Let’s talk about the learning curve that comes with Flow. I’ve been in the ecosystem now for over six years, and I can honestly say that I have never seen an aspect of Salesforce change and grow as quickly as has been the case these last few years with Flow.
With three seasonal releases a year and how much comes to Flow in each release, there is always something new to learn within the Flow space. As a Salesforce Administrator, if you’re not constantly building upon your Flow skills, you’ll quickly find yourself way behind in terms of your knowledge. Think about it this way, Flow Builder in it’s current form has only existed for around four years at the time of writing. Since then we have seen things like Flow Tests, HTTP Callouts, Flow Orchestrator, and Slack Actions join the suite of functionality available in Flow … and that’s only a few examples.
Rest assured for the Salesforce Admin, if you stick in Admin for the next few years, you will always have something new to learn relating to Flow (you’ll also likely have some gaps in your knowledge as well). Flow is constantly evolving, and you will never be short of something new to learn and try out.
There’s never been a better time to get on board the automation train with Salesforce Flow than right now. You can do and learn so much about Flow.
#3: You Will Always Have Something to Talk (and Teach) About
OK, so this point may be more relevant to those of us in the Trailblazer Community who speak at events or create content. Nevertheless, the point remains true. That being that if you talk about Flow, you’ll never be shy of something to talk about.
Right now, the demand for Flow content is at an all-time high, and that demand is probably not going away anytime soon. This is because of the skill gap I mentioned before where many Salesforce Administrators either don’t know Flow at all, or they need some gentle steering in the right way. The expert Flow Builder will likely have a seat at the table at many of the amazing community conference or community group events for a long time. This is something that I can say myself from (a lot of) experience.
In 2022, I spoke at 11 different conference events, delivering 15 different sessions across those events. Out of thos 15 sessions, 11 of them were focused on a topic relating to Flow (usually Orchestrator or Slack), that equates to 67% of those 15 sessions being Flow related. So if you can formulate content on a sub-topic relating to Flow, you will find that you stand a good chance of being able to speak on the topic often. Alongside that comes the opportunity to help people learn Flow. Whether it be through events, mentorship, 1-to-1 support or creating and developing short courses and/or blocks of sessions, if you are able to put together some really good content on Flow, you will find yourself in a good amount of demand to deliver that and help people learn Flow.
#4: You Don’t Need to Be a Coding Expert to Be a Flow Expert
Let’s pivot and briefly talk about coding knowledge. Over the last couple of weeks, I have digested some material that has went out and said that Flow is a “Developer tool at hear”. This is a statement that I think is detrimental to Salesforce Admins. I can understand the point being made, however, I don’t think it’s something that we should be saying with Flow being focused on Admins now.
This is why being a coding expert is not required at all to be an expert Flow builder. As a Salesforce Admin, you can totally be an amazing Flow builder with little to no knowledge of code. Flow is a declarative tool not a coding solution. This means that understanding of design best practices and Flow architecture is needed above the knowledge to read and understand code. Granted, if you happen to know how to read and understand code, it will be a great help to you as a Flow builder … but it is far from a requirement. The entry level for knowledge of Flow is much easier than for Apex and LWCs.
While it is true that Flow does come with a steeper learning curve than was the case for Workflow Rules and even Process Builder. The lack of need to read and understand code makes Flow a very accessible area of knowledge for Salesforce Administrators.
#5: Flow Gives Room for Top-Quality, Scalable Solutions and Ideas
Finally (for now), with the capabilities of Flow builder as a whole, the possibilities of what you can build without coding knowledge is almost endless. If you want to build a solution for handling your sales processes … you can do it in Flow. How about your event registration and check-in process, guess what … you can build that out in Flow as well. No matter the requirement, or the idea, you can most likely build out a powerful solution that will both help and dazzle your end users. Flow builder can pretty much do it all.
With this almost limitless set of possibilites, comes the need to build out automated solutions in a responsible manner. It’s very much like the old quote from Uncle Ben in Spiderman, “with great power, comes great responsibility”. That will probably be another post for another day. But as Flow Builders we shouldn’t just build something in Flow because we can. Rather, we should build something out in Flow because that is the best solution for the requirement when compared to all the other options.
The line between knowing when to build a Flow, and when not to build one is the defining characteristic of an expert Flow builder.
Closing Remarks
So that’s my list of five of the things I love about Flow. You might notice from this list how I haven’t really talked too much about the tool itself. That is because much of what sets Flow apart right now isn’t actually the tool itself, but so much that sits around it. For a lot of Salesforce Admins out there, the need to hear more about Flow and the need for help to learn it is a massive thing right now. If you go out and start learning Flow as it is right now, you will most likely still be learning much of the basics in a few months time. That shouldn’t be a discouragement, but rather an encouragement to keep going as building up your Flow knowledge will help to make you into an even better Salesforce Admin than you already are. It will also help you to stand out from amongst the crowd.
What about you? What do you love most about Flow? I’d love to hear your thoughts. So let me know in the responses below, or in the comments section online what you love most about Flow builder. Share the love for Flow on this valentine’s day. Enjoy!
