Lessons Learned: When Flows and Subflows Become Too Complex

Salesforce Flows are an amazing tool—until they become a challenge to maintain.

Flows are intended to be an admin-friendly way to automate processes, but it's easy for a well-intentioned Flow to turn into something far more complex than initially intended.

Here’s What Happens When a Flow Has Too Many Subflows:

• Difficult Maintenance: Each subflow adds another layer of complexity. The relationships between these subflows make it difficult to update or debug.
• Challenging Troubleshooting: When issues arise, tracing the logic through a Flow with dozens of subflows can feel like finding a needle in a haystack.
• Redundancy and Bloated Logic: New subflows are often added to handle evolving requirements without considering the bigger picture. This can lead to redundant actions and duplicate logic, making the entire Flow bulky and harder to optimize.

What Can We Do About It?

• Consolidate Logic into Apex Classes: By moving core business logic into an Invocable Apex Class, you can still call this logic from Flow, but without the same level of entanglement.
• Simplify and Modularize: Not all processes need to be handled by a subflow. Sometimes it's better to simplify and modularize your approach by creating Apex actions or breaking down the Flow into meaningful, reusable units.
• Ask Yourself: Does It Scale?: Before adding another subflow, take a step back and ask yourself—will this still be understandable when I have ten more similar requirements? Often, the answer will lead us to rethink our approach.

Have you faced similar issues with Flows? How did you overcome them?