When Does a Flow Commit a Transaction in Salesforce?

Salesforce Flows are powerful tools for automating business processes within the Salesforce platform. Understanding when and how a flow commits a transaction is crucial for ensuring data integrity, minimizing errors, and optimizing the flow execution.

Understanding Transactions in Salesforce

In Salesforce, a transaction refers to a single unit of work that either completely succeeds or completely fails. The entire transaction is rolled back if any part of the transaction fails. This ensures that the data in Salesforce remains consistent and accurate.

When you run a Flow in Salesforce, you are essentially executing a series of actions (such as creating, updating, or deleting records) as part of a transaction. But when exactly does Salesforce commit this transaction?

Flow Commit Process: When Does It Happen?

Salesforce commits a transaction after the flow completes all actions in the background. This means that Salesforce will only commit the transaction to the database once the flow finishes executing all of its steps, including any DML (Data Manipulation Language) operations, such as:

• Creating records
• Updating records
• Deleting records

Key Points to Know:

1. Flow Execution Order:
   • Flows execute a series of actions sequentially. If there are DML operations within the flow, Salesforce will only commit these changes once all steps are completed, and there are no errors during execution.
2. Implicit Transaction Handling:
   • Flows do not immediately commit data as soon as a DML action occurs. Instead, Salesforce buffers the changes until the flow execution is finalized. If any errors occur during the flow, the transaction will be rolled back, and none of the changes will be committed.
3. Final Commit on Flow Completion:
   • Once the flow has completed all actions and there are no errors, Salesforce will then commit the transaction, making all changes permanent in the database.
4. Transactional Control:
   • If you need more control over how and when a flow commits its transaction, consider using Apex in combination with your flow. Apex allows you to explicitly control transaction boundaries using Savepoints and Database.rollback() for more complex transaction management.
5. Error Handling and Rollback:
   • If an error occurs in the flow (such as validation errors or issues with data integrity), the entire transaction will be rolled back. This ensures no partial changes are committed to Salesforce.

Conclusion:

In Salesforce, a flow commits a transaction after it successfully completes all steps and executes all actions within the flow. Understanding this process helps you design more efficient flows and handle potential errors more gracefully. By ensuring proper error handling and flow optimization, you can enhance the reliability of your Salesforce automation processes.

For more in-depth information, you can explore Salesforce’s documentation on Flow Transactions to ensure you’re using best practices when creating flows in your organization.