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Choices, Choices: What Are Radio Button Groups Best Used For

Salesforce’s Summer ’26 release is packing some serious automation upgrades. Whether you are managing multi-stakeholder approvals, scaling orchestration across your org, or building complex integrations without code, the platform is steadily removing friction points for admins. Among the most anticipated and highly visible improvements are the user interface enhancements coming to Screen Flows.

If you have ever built a screen flow and felt like you just couldn’t find the exact picker component you really needed, you are not alone. For years, Salesforce admins have relied on a standard set of inputs, but sometimes those options don’t quite fit the modern, streamlined aesthetic required for consumer-facing or high-efficiency internal apps. With the Salesforce Summer ’26 release, we are finally getting a massive UI upgrade to solve this: the Radio Button Group component.

The Problem with Traditional Inputs

Historically, when admins wanted to present users with a single-select choice, they relied heavily on traditional radio buttons, checkboxes, or picklists. While highly functional, these standard inputs can take up significant screen real estate. In complex flows, vertically listed radio buttons or extraordinarily long picklists often force users to scroll excessively, leading to a clunky and outdated user experience.

The Solution: Compact, Responsive Radio Button Groups

The new Radio Button Group component solves this real estate problem by offering a more compact and easily scannable alternative. It retains the core functionality of traditional radio buttons, meaning users can still only select a single option at runtime, but it completely overhauls the visual layout.

Visually, these actually look like “proper buttons” rather than old-school radio circles, giving your users a completely different interface experience than what we previously had inside Flow Builder. This component is fully responsive and adapts intelligently to the user’s device:

On Desktop: Choices are presented as horizontally stacked options, making excellent use of wider screens and drastically reducing vertical scrolling.

On Mobile: Choices automatically shift to a vertically stacked layout to accommodate narrower touch screens

Example Use Cases and Pro-Tips

Because these look like actual buttons, they are perfect for making quick, high-level decisions obvious to the user.

Action Selection: Give your users a clear, button-driven choice to “Create,” “Update,” or “Delete” a record

Shipping & Checkout: Instead of burying delivery speeds in a dropdown, present horizontal, button-like choices for “Standard,” “Express,” and “Overnight” shipping.

Adding this to your flows is incredibly simple. Inside Flow Builder, you just drag the Radio Button Group component from the left panel directly onto your screen, and configure it by adding your desired choices.

A Pro-Tip on Customization (Icons vs. Emojis): If you are looking to make these buttons even more visual, there is one important design limitation to keep in mind. If you select a standard Salesforce icon for your choice, it is not going to display inside the Radio Button Group.

If you absolutely need native Salesforce icons, you will still want to use the Visual Picker component. However, there is a fun and easy workaround: you can use emojis directly in your choice text labels. Many Trailblazers have already started using emojis while demoing this new functionality to add a pop of color and visual context to these new button groups.

A Comprehensive Review of Choice Components in Salesforce Flows

While the new Radio Button Group is exciting, Salesforce Flows offer a wide variety of choice components, each suited for specific scenarios. Here is a short review of all the choice components currently available to help you build the best user experience.

Standard Radio Buttons

What it is: The classic vertical list of circular clickable options.

When to use it: Use this when you have a small number of mutually exclusive choices (usually 2 to 5) and you want all options to be immediately visible to the user without requiring them to click a dropdown.

Drawbacks: As noted in the Summer ’26 updates, standard radio buttons stack vertically and can take up too much vertical screen space, causing excessive scrolling on longer forms

Picklists (Dropdowns)

What it is: A standard dropdown menu that reveals a list of choices when clicked.

When to use it: Picklists are ideal when you have a long list of mutually exclusive options (e.g., a list of 50 US States) and you need to conserve screen real estate.

Drawbacks: They require an extra click to view the options, which hides information from the user until they interact with the component.

Dependent Picklists

What it is: A set of picklists where the choices available in the second (dependent) picklist are dynamically filtered based on the value selected in the first (controlling) picklist.

When to use it: Perfect for hierarchical data, such as selecting a “Country” and then selecting a “State/Province” within that specific country.

Summer ’26 Update: As of Summer ’26, Dependent Picklists are one of the expanded components that now support styling overrides. You can customize their look and feel to override your org’s default theme, giving you more branding control.

Checkboxes (and Checkbox Groups)

What it is: Square selection boxes that allow for multiple selections.

When to use it: Use checkboxes when the user is allowed to select more than one option at a time (“Select all that apply”), or as a standalone boolean (True/False) toggle.

Drawbacks: Like standard radio buttons, long lists of checkboxes can clutter the screen and force scrolling.

Visual Picker

What it is: A highly visual, tile-based selection component that supports the inclusion of native Salesforce icons and rich text.

When to use it: Use the Visual Picker when you want to create a visually engaging, card-like selection experience. As mentioned previously, if you need to display standard Salesforce icons alongside your choices, the Visual Picker is the component you must use, as the new Radio Button Group does not support them.

Choice Lookup

What it is: A search-based input field that allows users to type and dynamically filter through a massive list of choices or records.

When to use it: Use this when your list of choices is too large for a standard picklist, and you want to provide a “search-as-you-type” experience to help the user find their desired option quickly.

Summer ’26 Update: Just like Dependent Picklists, the Choice Lookup component has been upgraded in the Summer ’26 release to support full styling overrides. You can now customize its style and layout to perfectly match your Experience Cloud site or custom Lightning app.

Ready to Build Better Screen Flows? Start With Summer ’26

With the addition of the new Radio Button Group component, admins now have more flexibility than ever to design intuitive, low-friction screen flows. By understanding the strengths and limitations of each choice component, from the visual flair of the Visual Picker to the space-saving utility of Picklists and the modern layout of the Radio Button Group, you can ensure your Salesforce automations look just as good as they function.

The best part? These are not just cosmetic upgrades. When users can scan choices faster, make decisions with fewer clicks, and navigate flows without excessive scrolling, you see real downstream impact: higher completion rates, fewer errors, and less admin rework. Whether you are building a customer-facing Experience Cloud app or an internal ops tool used by your sales team every day, thoughtful component selection is what separates a flow that users tolerate from one they actually enjoy. Take some time in a sandbox this release cycle to swap out those legacy radio button stacks and long picklists for their Summer ’26 counterparts. The difference will be immediately obvious.

Explore related content:

Summer ’26: What the New Accessibility Release Updates Mean for Your Org

Warn and Inform with Native Toast Messages in Salesforce Flow

Field Access Summary

Summer ’26: What the New Accessibility Release Updates Mean for Your Org

Warn and Inform with Native Toast Messages in Salesforce Flow

Just when the Salesforce community thought we had fully digested the Summer ’26 release notes, the product team decided to drop a classic “one more thing.” Adam White recently announced that two new functionalities were “snuck” into the release at the last minute. For those of us who live and breathe Flow Builder, this is like finding an extra gift under the tree after you thought Christmas was over.

The star of this stealth update? The Native Show Toast Message Action.

In this post, we’re going to break down why this is such a great update for Salesforce Admins, how we used to handle this the “old way”, and a clever trick to implement these notifications without cluttering your Flow logic.

What Exactly is a Toast Message?

In the world of User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) design, a Toast Message is a small, non-modal notification that “pops up” (like toast from a toaster) to provide feedback about an operation.

Unlike a modal or a popup window, a toast message doesn’t require the user to click “OK” to continue their work (though they can be configured to stay until dismissed). They are designed to be subtle but informative. In Salesforce, you usually see them at the top of the screen in green (Success), red (Error), yellow (Warning), or blue (Information).

Why Toasts Matter

Toasts are critical for a smooth user journey. They confirm that an action was successful or alert a user to a problem without breaking their concentration or forcing them to navigate to a new page. Without toasts, users are often left wondering, “Did that save?” or “Did my automation actually run?”

The Way We Were: The Era of UnofficialSF and AppExchange

For years, the request for a native “Show Toast” action in Flow was one of the most requested ideas. But for a long time, the answer from Salesforce was silence. This led the community to innovate on its own.

The UnofficialSF Method

To get a toast message in a Screen Flow, most Admins turned to UnofficialSF. This incredible community resource offered a “Show Toast” flow component. While it worked beautifully, it came with technical debt considerations:

• Installation Management: You had to install a managed or unmanaged package in your production environment.

• Maintenance: Every time Salesforce updated its API, you had to ensure your community-sourced components remained compatible.

• Security Audits: In highly regulated industries (like Finance or Healthcare), getting a third-party package approved by a security team can take months.

The AppExchange and Custom LWC

Other Admins turned to the AppExchange for “Flow Utility” packs or, if they had developer resources, they wrote custom Lightning Web Components (LWC). An LWC could use the ShowToastEvent in JavaScript, but it required writing code, which goes against the “Clicks, Not Code” mantra that makes Flow so powerful.

That era is officially over. With the Summer ’26 release, the power is finally native.

Exploring the New Native “Show Toast” Action

The new functionality allows us to call a standard action directly from the Flow Builder. It is robust, flexible, and incredibly easy to configure. Here is what you can now do natively:

Style Selection

You can choose the “Flavor” of your notification. This dictates the icon and the color of the toast:

• Success (Green): For when things go right.

• Warning (Yellow): To alert users of a potential issue that doesn’t stop progress.

• Information (Blue): General updates or helpful hints.

• Error (Red): When a process fails or a validation is triggered.

Dismissal Control

You get to decide the “persistence” of the message.

• Automatic: The toast appears and then fades away after a few seconds. This is great for simple success confirmations.

• Manual: The toast stays on the screen until the user clicks the “X” to close it. This is vital for errors or warnings where you want to ensure the user has actually read the information.

Rich Messaging and URLs

This is where it gets really exciting. You aren’t limited to plain text.

• Dynamic Resources: You can include Flow variables, formulas, or record fields in the title and description.

• The “Curly Bracket” Trick: By using curly brackets { } in your message description, you can embed a URL. This could be a link to a public webpage, a internal Terms & Conditions document, or even a link to a specific Salesforce record.

Use Cases for Native Toasts

How should you use this in your day-to-day Admin life? Here are a few examples:

• Eligibility Alerts: As shown in the video below, if a customer no longer qualifies for a service (e.g., they moved out of the service area), a toast can immediately inform the user the moment they open the record.

• Data Validation Feedback: Instead of a clunky fault screen, show a red Error toast if a user enters data that doesn’t meet business criteria.

• Onboarding Guidance: When a new Lead is created, show an “Information” toast with a link to the “Sales Playbook” for that specific industry.

• Process Confirmation: After a complex Screen Flow that updates multiple records, show a “Success” toast that includes a link to the primary updated record. Please note that Salesforce included another action in the last minute that opens the newly created record on another tab for the user. Stay tuned for more updates related to that action.

The Pro Trick: Conditional Visibility via Lightning Record Pages

In the video, I demonstrated a clever way to use this. Normally, you might think you need to build a complex Flow that runs, checks criteria using a Decision element, and then decides to show the toast. There is a clever method.

Instead of putting the logic inside the Flow, you can keep the Flow extremely simple. Just the “Show Toast” action, and put the logic on the Lightning Record Page.

How to do it:

1. Create a simple Screen Flow: The flow only contains one element: the “Show Toast” action.

2. Add to Record Page: Drag the “Flow” component onto your Contact or Account page layout.

3. Set Component Visibility: In the Lightning App Builder, click on the Flow component. In the right-hand sidebar, go to Set Component Visibility.

4. Define Your Criteria: For example, set the visibility to Record > Last Name > Equals > Brock.

The Result: The Flow only “exists” and runs when that specific condition is met. When I go to Lex Luthor’s record, nothing happens. But when I navigate to Eddie Brock’s record, the Flow triggers, and the toast message pops up instantly: “Customer no longer qualifies for our services.”

This keeps your Flow canvas clean and offloads the “heavy lifting” to the Lightning UI engine.

Stop Duct Taping Your Flow Notifications

The “Sneaky” Summer ’26 release features prove that Salesforce is listening to the community. By making the Show Toast action native, they have removed the need for third-party dependencies, reduced technical debt, and given Admins a powerful new tool to communicate with users.

The ability to include clickable URLs and dynamic variables means our notifications can now be functional bridges to other parts of the business.

Enjoy this new functionality, folks! It’s a game-changer for Flow UX.

Watch the video here:

Does this new native action mean you’ll be retiring your unofficialSF packages? Let us know in the comments below!

Explore related content:

11 Flow Updates in Summer 26 Release

Get Your Org Ready: Summer ’26 Admin Highlights

Master Custom Batch Sizes for Schedule-Triggered Flows

Warn and Inform with Native Toast Messages in Salesforce Flow

Just when the Salesforce community thought we had fully digested the Summer ’26 release notes, the product team decided to drop a classic “one more thing.” Adam White recently announced that two new functionalities were “snuck” into the release at the last minute. For those of us who live and breathe Flow Builder, this is like finding an extra gift under the tree after you thought Christmas was over.

The star of this stealth update? The Native Show Toast Message Action.

In this post, we’re going to break down why this is such a great update for Salesforce Admins, how we used to handle this the “old way”, and a clever trick to implement these notifications without cluttering your Flow logic.

What Exactly is a Toast Message?

In the world of User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) design, a Toast Message is a small, non-modal notification that “pops up” (like toast from a toaster) to provide feedback about an operation.

Unlike a modal or a popup window, a toast message doesn’t require the user to click “OK” to continue their work (though they can be configured to stay until dismissed). They are designed to be subtle but informative. In Salesforce, you usually see them at the top of the screen in green (Success), red (Error), yellow (Warning), or blue (Information).

Why Toasts Matter

Toasts are critical for a smooth user journey. They confirm that an action was successful or alert a user to a problem without breaking their concentration or forcing them to navigate to a new page. Without toasts, users are often left wondering, “Did that save?” or “Did my automation actually run?”

The Way We Were: The Era of UnofficialSF and AppExchange

For years, the request for a native “Show Toast” action in Flow was one of the most requested ideas. But for a long time, the answer from Salesforce was silence. This led the community to innovate on its own.

The UnofficialSF Method

To get a toast message in a Screen Flow, most Admins turned to UnofficialSF. This incredible community resource offered a “Show Toast” flow component. While it worked beautifully, it came with technical debt considerations:

• Installation Management: You had to install a managed or unmanaged package in your production environment.

• Maintenance: Every time Salesforce updated its API, you had to ensure your community-sourced components remained compatible.

• Security Audits: In highly regulated industries (like Finance or Healthcare), getting a third-party package approved by a security team can take months.

The AppExchange and Custom LWC

Other Admins turned to the AppExchange for “Flow Utility” packs or, if they had developer resources, they wrote custom Lightning Web Components (LWC). An LWC could use the ShowToastEvent in JavaScript, but it required writing code, which goes against the “Clicks, Not Code” mantra that makes Flow so powerful.

That era is officially over. With the Summer ’26 release, the power is finally native.

Exploring the New Native “Show Toast” Action

The new functionality allows us to call a standard action directly from the Flow Builder. It is robust, flexible, and incredibly easy to configure. Here is what you can now do natively:

Style Selection

You can choose the “Flavor” of your notification. This dictates the icon and the color of the toast:

• Success (Green): For when things go right.

• Warning (Yellow): To alert users of a potential issue that doesn’t stop progress.

• Information (Blue): General updates or helpful hints.

• Error (Red): When a process fails or a validation is triggered.

Dismissal Control

You get to decide the “persistence” of the message.

• Automatic: The toast appears and then fades away after a few seconds. This is great for simple success confirmations.

• Manual: The toast stays on the screen until the user clicks the “X” to close it. This is vital for errors or warnings where you want to ensure the user has actually read the information.

Rich Messaging and URLs

This is where it gets really exciting. You aren’t limited to plain text.

• Dynamic Resources: You can include Flow variables, formulas, or record fields in the title and description.

• The “Curly Bracket” Trick: By using curly brackets { } in your message description, you can embed a URL. This could be a link to a public webpage, a internal Terms & Conditions document, or even a link to a specific Salesforce record.

Use Cases for Native Toasts

How should you use this in your day-to-day Admin life? Here are a few examples:

• Eligibility Alerts: As shown in the video below, if a customer no longer qualifies for a service (e.g., they moved out of the service area), a toast can immediately inform the user the moment they open the record.

• Data Validation Feedback: Instead of a clunky fault screen, show a red Error toast if a user enters data that doesn’t meet business criteria.

• Onboarding Guidance: When a new Lead is created, show an “Information” toast with a link to the “Sales Playbook” for that specific industry.

• Process Confirmation: After a complex Screen Flow that updates multiple records, show a “Success” toast that includes a link to the primary updated record. Please note that Salesforce included another action in the last minute that opens the newly created record on another tab for the user. Stay tuned for more updates related to that action.

The Pro Trick: Conditional Visibility via Lightning Record Pages

In the video, I demonstrated a clever way to use this. Normally, you might think you need to build a complex Flow that runs, checks criteria using a Decision element, and then decides to show the toast. There is a clever method.

Instead of putting the logic inside the Flow, you can keep the Flow extremely simple. Just the “Show Toast” action, and put the logic on the Lightning Record Page.

How to do it:

1. Create a simple Screen Flow: The flow only contains one element: the “Show Toast” action.

2. Add to Record Page: Drag the “Flow” component onto your Contact or Account page layout.

3. Set Component Visibility: In the Lightning App Builder, click on the Flow component. In the right-hand sidebar, go to Set Component Visibility.

4. Define Your Criteria: For example, set the visibility to Record > Last Name > Equals > Brock.

The Result: The Flow only “exists” and runs when that specific condition is met. When I go to Lex Luthor’s record, nothing happens. But when I navigate to Eddie Brock’s record, the Flow triggers, and the toast message pops up instantly: “Customer no longer qualifies for our services.”

This keeps your Flow canvas clean and offloads the “heavy lifting” to the Lightning UI engine.

Stop Duct Taping Your Flow Notifications

The “Sneaky” Summer ’26 release features prove that Salesforce is listening to the community. By making the Show Toast action native, they have removed the need for third-party dependencies, reduced technical debt, and given Admins a powerful new tool to communicate with users.

The ability to include clickable URLs and dynamic variables means our notifications can now be functional bridges to other parts of the business.

Enjoy this new functionality, folks! It’s a game-changer for Flow UX.

Watch the video here:

Does this new native action mean you’ll be retiring your unofficialSF packages? Let us know in the comments below!

Explore related content:

11 Flow Updates in Summer 26 Release

Get Your Org Ready: Summer ’26 Admin Highlights

Master Custom Batch Sizes for Schedule-Triggered Flows

Warn and Inform with Native Toast Messages in Salesforce Flow

Just when the Salesforce community thought we had fully digested the Summer ’26 release notes, the product team decided to drop a classic “one more thing.” Adam White recently announced that two new functionalities were “snuck” into the release at the last minute. For those of us who live and breathe Flow Builder, this is like finding an extra gift under the tree after you thought Christmas was over.

The star of this stealth update? The Native Show Toast Message Action.

In this post, we’re going to break down why this is such a great update for Salesforce Admins, how we used to handle this the “old way”, and a clever trick to implement these notifications without cluttering your Flow logic.

What Exactly is a Toast Message?

In the world of User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) design, a Toast Message is a small, non-modal notification that “pops up” (like toast from a toaster) to provide feedback about an operation.

Unlike a modal or a popup window, a toast message doesn’t require the user to click “OK” to continue their work (though they can be configured to stay until dismissed). They are designed to be subtle but informative. In Salesforce, you usually see them at the top of the screen in green (Success), red (Error), yellow (Warning), or blue (Information).

Why Toasts Matter

Toasts are critical for a smooth user journey. They confirm that an action was successful or alert a user to a problem without breaking their concentration or forcing them to navigate to a new page. Without toasts, users are often left wondering, “Did that save?” or “Did my automation actually run?”

The Way We Were: The Era of UnofficialSF and AppExchange

For years, the request for a native “Show Toast” action in Flow was one of the most requested ideas. But for a long time, the answer from Salesforce was silence. This led the community to innovate on its own.

The UnofficialSF Method

To get a toast message in a Screen Flow, most Admins turned to UnofficialSF. This incredible community resource offered a “Show Toast” flow component. While it worked beautifully, it came with technical debt considerations:

• Installation Management: You had to install a managed or unmanaged package in your production environment.

• Maintenance: Every time Salesforce updated its API, you had to ensure your community-sourced components remained compatible.

• Security Audits: In highly regulated industries (like Finance or Healthcare), getting a third-party package approved by a security team can take months.

The AppExchange and Custom LWC

Other Admins turned to the AppExchange for “Flow Utility” packs or, if they had developer resources, they wrote custom Lightning Web Components (LWC). An LWC could use the ShowToastEvent in JavaScript, but it required writing code, which goes against the “Clicks, Not Code” mantra that makes Flow so powerful.

That era is officially over. With the Summer ’26 release, the power is finally native.

Exploring the New Native “Show Toast” Action

The new functionality allows us to call a standard action directly from the Flow Builder. It is robust, flexible, and incredibly easy to configure. Here is what you can now do natively:

Style Selection

You can choose the “Flavor” of your notification. This dictates the icon and the color of the toast:

• Success (Green): For when things go right.

• Warning (Yellow): To alert users of a potential issue that doesn’t stop progress.

• Information (Blue): General updates or helpful hints.

• Error (Red): When a process fails or a validation is triggered.

Dismissal Control

You get to decide the “persistence” of the message.

• Automatic: The toast appears and then fades away after a few seconds. This is great for simple success confirmations.

• Manual: The toast stays on the screen until the user clicks the “X” to close it. This is vital for errors or warnings where you want to ensure the user has actually read the information.

Rich Messaging and URLs

This is where it gets really exciting. You aren’t limited to plain text.

• Dynamic Resources: You can include Flow variables, formulas, or record fields in the title and description.

• The “Curly Bracket” Trick: By using curly brackets { } in your message description, you can embed a URL. This could be a link to a public webpage, a internal Terms & Conditions document, or even a link to a specific Salesforce record.

Use Cases for Native Toasts

How should you use this in your day-to-day Admin life? Here are a few examples:

• Eligibility Alerts: As shown in the video below, if a customer no longer qualifies for a service (e.g., they moved out of the service area), a toast can immediately inform the user the moment they open the record.

• Data Validation Feedback: Instead of a clunky fault screen, show a red Error toast if a user enters data that doesn’t meet business criteria.

• Onboarding Guidance: When a new Lead is created, show an “Information” toast with a link to the “Sales Playbook” for that specific industry.

• Process Confirmation: After a complex Screen Flow that updates multiple records, show a “Success” toast that includes a link to the primary updated record. Please note that Salesforce included another action in the last minute that opens the newly created record on another tab for the user. Stay tuned for more updates related to that action.

The Pro Trick: Conditional Visibility via Lightning Record Pages

In the video, I demonstrated a clever way to use this. Normally, you might think you need to build a complex Flow that runs, checks criteria using a Decision element, and then decides to show the toast. There is a clever method.

Instead of putting the logic inside the Flow, you can keep the Flow extremely simple. Just the “Show Toast” action, and put the logic on the Lightning Record Page.

How to do it:

1. Create a simple Screen Flow: The flow only contains one element: the “Show Toast” action.

2. Add to Record Page: Drag the “Flow” component onto your Contact or Account page layout.

3. Set Component Visibility: In the Lightning App Builder, click on the Flow component. In the right-hand sidebar, go to Set Component Visibility.

4. Define Your Criteria: For example, set the visibility to Record > Last Name > Equals > Brock.

The Result: The Flow only “exists” and runs when that specific condition is met. When I go to Lex Luthor’s record, nothing happens. But when I navigate to Eddie Brock’s record, the Flow triggers, and the toast message pops up instantly: “Customer no longer qualifies for our services.”

This keeps your Flow canvas clean and offloads the “heavy lifting” to the Lightning UI engine.

Stop Duct Taping Your Flow Notifications

The “Sneaky” Summer ’26 release features prove that Salesforce is listening to the community. By making the Show Toast action native, they have removed the need for third-party dependencies, reduced technical debt, and given Admins a powerful new tool to communicate with users.

The ability to include clickable URLs and dynamic variables means our notifications can now be functional bridges to other parts of the business.

Enjoy this new functionality, folks! It’s a game-changer for Flow UX.

Watch the video here:

Does this new native action mean you’ll be retiring your unofficialSF packages? Let us know in the comments below!

Explore related content:

11 Flow Updates in Summer 26 Release

Get Your Org Ready: Summer ’26 Admin Highlights

Master Custom Batch Sizes for Schedule-Triggered Flows

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.

Explore related content:

What’s New in the Salesforce Mobile App: Summer ’26 Release

11 Flow Updates in Summer 26 Release

Get Your Org Ready: Summer ’26 Admin Highlights

Field Access Summary

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.

Explore related content:

What’s New in the Salesforce Mobile App: Summer ’26 Release

11 Flow Updates in Summer 26 Release

Get Your Org Ready: Summer ’26 Admin Highlights

Field Access Summary

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.

Explore related content:

What’s New in the Salesforce Mobile App: Summer ’26 Release

11 Flow Updates in Summer 26 Release

Get Your Org Ready: Summer ’26 Admin Highlights

Field Access Summary