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Master Custom Batch Sizes for Schedule-Triggered Flows

The wait is finally over! Summer ’26 has officially arrived, and while some might call this release “light,” those of us deep in the automation trenches have found some gems. If you’ve spent any time on Salesforce Break, you know I’m passionate about Flow performance and scalability. That’s why my #1 item for this release is the arrival of custom batch sizes for scheduled flows.

This is a functionality I’ve been asking for for years, and it finally got rolled out to our Flow Builder toolset. Let’s get into why this matters, the technical hurdles it solves, and how you can use it to build more resilient automations.

What is a Schedule-Triggered Flow?

Before we get into the new settings, let’s define the foundation. A Schedule-Triggered Flow is a type of background automation that launches at a specific time and frequency (once, daily, or weekly).

Unlike Record-Triggered flows that fire the moment a record is edited, these flows are often used for “maintenance” tasks, such as:

• Sending follow-up emails for stale opportunities.
• Updating status fields on records that have reached an expiration date.
• Nightly data cleanups or syncing with external systems.

You define a start date, time, and an optional object with filter criteria. Salesforce then finds every record in your org that meets those criteria and runs a “flow interview” for each one.

Understanding Bulkification and Batching

Efficiency is at the heart of Salesforce’s architecture. To handle thousands of records without crashing the servers, Salesforce uses bulkification and batching.

By default, when a scheduled flow runs, Salesforce groups records into batches of 200. For example, if you have 300 accounts that need updating, Salesforce won’t run 300 separate transactions. Instead, it creates two transactions:

1. Transaction 1: Processes 200 records.
2. Transaction 2: Processes the remaining 100 records.

While this is great for overall system efficiency, it can lead to significant problems when your automation logic is complex or touches sensitive data.

The Danger Zone: Governor Limits and Errors

To ensure no single process hogs all the resources in a multi-tenant environment, Salesforce enforces Governor Limits, strict “usage caps” on things like the number of SOQL queries, DML statements (updates/inserts), and CPU time allowed in a single transaction.

When you process 200 records at once in a single transaction, the “math” of these limits adds up quickly. If your flow performs a few queries per record, multiplying those by 200 can easily blow past the 100-query limit, resulting in a dreaded `System.LimitException`.

Here is another potential issue: One of the most common, and frustrating, issues we face is record locking. When Salesforce updates a record, it “locks” that record to prevent other processes from changing it at the same time. It also locks the parent (master) for this record.

Let’s say you have a custom course record in Salesforce, and you have a cohort record under it. The relationship is master-detail. When Salesforce updates a cohort record, it will attempt to lock both records first. If it can’t lock these records, the system will throw an error.

The Error Scenario:

If multiple batches of 200 contain child records that all belong to the same parent, Transaction A might try to lock the parent to update cohort 1. Simultaneously, another part of the batch (or a parallel transaction) tries to lock that same parent to update cohort 2. The second attempt fails because it cannot “reach in” and get the lock, resulting in an UNABLE_TO_LOCK_ROW error.

The Solution: Custom Batch Sizes

In Summer ’26, we finally have the control to mitigate these issues. Under the “Select Object” settings of a scheduled flow, you can now enter a custom number for the records processed at the same time.

The Default: 200 records.

The Power Move: You can decrease this number, even down to 1.

Why set a batch size of 1?

If you are experiencing frequent locking errors or hitting CPU limits, running the automation “one-by-one” (each transaction processing a single record) ensures that the parent record is only locked for that specific record’s update and then immediately released. This will decrease the possibility of locking errors.

Another potential solution for locking issues is sorting by parent before updating child records. Since we cannot sort records by Parent ID in a schedule-triggered flow, decreasing the batch size is often your only tool to prevent parent-record locking conflicts.

Since scheduled flows often run at night or on weekends when user activity is low, the increased total processing time is usually a fair trade-off for 100% reliability.

Best Practices and Recommendations

To get the most out of this new feature, keep these recommendations in mind:

1. Identify High-Risk Objects: Pay extra attention to flows running on Task, Event, Contact, and Opportunity objects, or any custom object that is a child in a Master-Detail relationship, as these are high-risk for locking issues. Remember that standard object relationships are not really technically classified as master-detail, but they could act like one in some respects. These are special relationships that have their own rules. For example: Account is not a required lookup for Opportunity, but you can still add a rollup summary field to the Account for the Opportunity.

2. Monitor Your Error Rates: Keep an eye on the new Element Error Rate column in your Flow list view. If you see a high percentage of errors on a scheduled flow, it’s a prime candidate for a smaller batch size. Disclaimer: This is a brand new functionality, and I have not played with this, yet.

3. Test the “Middle Ground”: You don’t always have to drop to a batch size of 1. If 200 is too high, try 50 or 100 to balance speed and stability.

This update is a huge win for Salesforce Admins and Architects alike. It provides the granular control we need to ensure our “heavy lifting” automations run smoothly without constant manual intervention or error emails.

Take Control of Your Automations

The arrival of custom batch sizes in Summer ’26 is a testament to Salesforce listening to the community’s “real world” pain points. While it might seem like a small setting in the Flow Builder, it is a massive architectural lever for those of us responsible for high-volume data integrity.

No longer are we forced to “hack” our way around governor limits or cross our fingers that record locking doesn’t tank our nightly cleanups. We finally have the precision to tune our automations like a high-performance engine. So, take a look at your most troublesome scheduled flows, experiment with those batch sizes, and turn those “failed flow” emails into a thing of the past. Happy flowing!

A quick heads-up: this feature is specific to the Summer ’26 release.

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Top Spring ’26 Salesforce Flow Features

What are the new features about? Spring 26 brings new screen, usability and platform enhancement features. Let’s dive into the details.

Top Screen Flow Spring 26 Features

It seems like most of the new features involve screen flows.

I will not go into further detail, but this release introduces yet another file upload component for screen flows: LWR File Upload Component for Experience Cloud.

Here are the rest of the screen flow improvements.

Screen Flow Screen Element and Component Style Enhancements

Screen flow screen element gets features that allow you do set the background, text and border colors. Border weight and radius can be adjusted. For input components, in-focus color for text can be differentiated. Flow buttons also get similar adjustments gaining the ability to change colors on hover over.

Any styling changes you set override your org or Experience Cloud site’s default theme.

Remember to keep your color and contrast choices in check for accessibility. Don’t do it as I did below. Go to the WebAIM contrast checker website and plug in your color codes to check whether their contrast is sufficient for accessibility.

Screen Flow Message Element

Screen Flow Message Element leverages the new styling options to display a message on the screen. It has a pulldown that allows you to create an information, success, warning or an error message. These come with standard color sets, which will direct flow developers in using a standard visual language.

This functionality is compliant with A11y for accessibility.

See all the four types on the same screen below.

Screen Flow Kanban Component (Beta)

The new Kanban component allows you to organize records into cards and columns. This is particularly useful for visualizing process phases and managing transitions across your workflow.

Use the new Kanban Board component to show records as cards in columns that represent workflow stages, without custom Lightning implementations. The Kanban Board is read-only, so users can’t drag cards between stages at run time.

Data Table Column Sort and Row Value Edit (TBD)

Now the user can sort the data table by columns and edit text fields in rows. This feature is not available in the preview orgs. The product team is working hard in the background to make this into the Spring 26 release. This functionality is slated to make it to the release at the last minute.

Preview Files Natively in Screen Flows

Elevate document-based processes by enabling your users to review file content directly within a screen flow. The new File Preview screen component removes the requirement to download files externally, ensuring easier document review and approval workflows.

This component seems to be already in production.

Open Screen Flows in Lightning Experience with a URL

Previously, when you opened a flow via URL, it did not launch in lightning experience. Now, it will launch in lightning preserving the experience your user is used to especially when they are working on a customized lightning console app.

I will quote the release notes for this one.

“To open a flow in Lightning Experience, append /lightning/flow/YourFlowNameHere to your URL. To run a specific flow version, append /lightning/flow/YourFlowNameHere/versionId to your URL. Flows that open in Lightning Experience have improved performance because most required Lightning components are already loaded into the browser session. In Lightning console apps, your tabs are preserved when a flow opens, and you can switch to other tabs while the flow is working. Using the new URL format also ensures that your browser behaves consistently, with forward, back, and your browser history working as expected.

To pass data into a flow through its URL, append ?flow__variableIdHere=value to the end of your URL. For example, to pass a case number into a flow, /lightning/flow/YourFlowNameHere?flow__variableIdHereID={!Case.CaseNumber}.

Use & to append multiple variables into a flow. For example, /lightning/flow/YourFlowNameHere?flow__varUserFirst={!$User.FirstName}&flow__varUserLast={!$User.LastName} passes both the user first name and last name into the flow.”

Usability and Platform Features

I listed all of the screen flow features above. The following two items are huge usability improvements that also involves screen management for the flow canvas, not just only for screen flows.

Collapse and Expand Decision and Loop Elements

When your flow gets to big and you need to Marie Kondo (tidy up) your flow canvas, you can collapse the decision and loop elements that take up a lot of real estate. You can always expand them back when needed.

Now you can collapse and expand branching elements with Flow Builder, including Wait, Decision, Loop, Path Experiment, and Async Actions, helping you focus on the key parts of your flow.

This layout is saved automatically and locally in your browser, making it easier to return to your work without changing the view for other users.

Mouse, Trackpad and Keyboard Scroll

Now you don’t have to drag or use the scroll bar to move the flow around on the flow canvas. You can use vertical and horizontal wheels on your mouse, the arrows keys on your keyboard or your trackpad if you have one.

No need to use Salesforce Inspector Reloaded to get this functionality any more. Thanks to Salesforce Inspector Relaoded for filling the gap in the mean time.

Content Document and Content Version Flow Triggers for Files and Attachments (Beta)

Salesforce delivered a new event type in the last release that could trigger flows for standard object files and attachments. The functionality was limited. In this release, Salesforce gave us the ability to trigger on all new files/attachments and their updates for all objects.

I was told by the product team that this functionality will be released as beta.

Flow Logging

I am not exactly sure what has been improved here. Salesforce had previously announced additional flow logging capabilities leveraging Data Cloud. Now, a new flow logging tab has been added to the Automation Lightning App.

Debug Improvements

The debug in the flow builder will now remember the record that it ran on and the updated field value if it is running in an update scenario. Debug inputs such as triggering record values, debug options, and input variable values now remain set when you save flow changes within your Flow Builder session. The user will need to click a reset button to disassociate the debug run from the input for the last run. This change is intended to make debug reruns faster.

Flow builder will preserve debug configurations when you save changes to your flow. Refreshing your browser or closing Flow Builder clears all debug settings.

Conclusion

Salesforce product teams work hard delivering new features for every release. Spring 26 release brings significant new improvements for the flow builder. I would have liked to see additional capabilities coming for flow types other than screen flows. This release seems to be a lighter release in that area.

Additional bonus features include request for approval component for lightning page layouts (highly-requested feature), compare screen flow versions, and associating flow tests with flow versions.

The release notes are still in preview. And we could still have new functionalities removed or added in the release cycle.

This post will be updated as additional details are made available.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZC_8W1IbUs?feature=oembed&w=800&h=450]

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