💃 The Salesforce Automation Dilemma 🕺

Good morning, Salesforce Nerds! ☀️ 

Today we’re checking out the DC vs Marvel of the platform, but instead of capes and laser eyes, we’ve got triggers, loops, and runtime limits.

As a Salesforce Architect who’s seen everything from elegant solutions to orgs that look like spaghetti spilled onto a whiteboard, I’m here to settle the score - or at least help you navigate the chaos. 🤷 

Let’s be honest: choosing between Flow and Apex isn’t always about what’s better.

It’s about what’s right for the use case, the team, the org, and your own sanity. 💯 

So buckle up, Salesforce nerds. We’re going deep.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Salesforce Automation Dilemma

• The Origin Stories

• Where Flow Shines

• Where Apex Dominates

• Architectural Considerations

• Final Verdict

EVERYTHING HAS A BEGINNING

THE ORIGIN STORIES

Salesforce Flow is the declarative powerhouse that lets admins automate processes without writing code. 💪 

Think of it as the Iron Man suit - user-friendly, powerful, and flashy, but it can blow up if you don’t know how to fly it.

Here’s a rundown: 👇️ 

🖥️ Screen Flow: Interactive wizards with UI components

➡️ Record-Triggered Flow: Replaces most workflow rules and process builders

⏲️ Scheduled Flow: Fires on a schedule, no user interaction

🖇️ Platform Event-Triggered Flow: Responds to asynchronous events

💥 Reactive Components: Live updates on screen without reloads

Apex, on the other hand, is the platform’s statically typed, object-oriented programming language

Built for precision, performance, and punching governor limits in the face. 👊 

It’s Batman: no powers, just skill, discipline, and a strong test class strategy. 💪 

💨 Triggers: Event-driven code on DML (before/after insert, update, delete)

🧩 Classes & Methods: Reusable business logic

↔️ Queueable, Batchable, Schedulable: Asynchronous processing flavors

🤘 Continuations: Async HTTP callouts without governor timeouts

📥️ Transaction Finalizers: Post-processing for Queueables (Winter ’23+)

FLOW IS GREAT, UNTIL IT ISN’T

WHERE FLOW SHINES

Flow has leveled up big time. 💥 

You can build complex branching logic, loops, subflows, and even invoke Apex actions.

For quick automation, it’s unmatched in speed of delivery and admin friendliness. 👍️ 

But with great declarative power comes great debugging pain.

Errors in Flow are like a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a platform exception. 🥴 

And when a Flow becomes a swirling canvas of 42 elements and 7 decision branches, it’s no longer a “low-code” solution - it’s a UX nightmare in disguise. 🚫 

ALWAYS AN OPTION

WHERE APEX DOMINATES

We’ve talked about this ad nauseam. 😅 

When you need control, reusability, and testability, (and honestly - when don’t you??) Apex wins. 🏁 

It's essential when: 👇️ 

• You need complex data manipulation

• You're calling external systems with HTTP callouts

• You're building reusable service layers

• You want strict version control and CI/CD integration

• You enjoy code coverage that tells you more than “did it run?”

But with great power comes … more boilerplate, more dev time, and more risk of someone forgetting to bulkify. 😇 

LET’S GET NERDY

ARCHITECTURAL CONSIDERATIONS

Before you declare allegiance to the Flow canvas or your favorite IDE, let’s zoom out and talk architecture. 🏗️ 

Because while both tools can get the job done, how they do it matters a lot more once your org has 300 Flows, 27 developers, and one very tired release manager. 😩 

📦️ Maintainability

• Flow: Easy to hand off, difficult to version. Visual but fragile.

• Apex: Easy to version, hard to explain in a handover doc without code comments and a lot of caffeine.

🧩 Separation of Concerns (SoC)

• Apex encourages this by design - services, domains, handlers, unit tests.

• Flow often violates it unless you’re super disciplined with subflows and naming.

♻️ Reusability

• Apex classes and methods can be reused across the org.

• Flows can be reused via Subflows, but it’s awkward when logic spans both declarative and programmatic layers.

🧪 Testing

• Apex has unit tests. Required. Enforced.

• Flow? You get to “activate and pray.” (Okay, now there are Flow tests - but they’re new and ... let’s say evolving.)

🔍️ CI/CD & Governance

• Apex integrates smoothly with source control and deployment pipelines.

• Flow still gives Git a bit of heartburn, though that’s improving with metadata decompositions and second-gen packaging.

Don’t think of this as a fight to the death. In modern Salesforce architecture, Flow and Apex are partners, not rivals.

Try this on for size:

✅ Use Flow for orchestration and UI-driven logic.

✅ Use Apex for computation-heavy logic, integrations, and reusable services.

Better yet, use Invocable Apex to expose clean service methods to Flow. 🤙 

This lets your admins build automations without rebuilding logic in parallel universes (read: technical debt).

Keep this in mind while deciding between the two 👇️ 

CHOOSE WISELY … AND OFTEN

FINAL VERDICT

If your org is a Marvel movie, then Flow is Doctor Strange - opening portals, making things move, orchestrating events. 🤌 

Apex is Iron Man - smart, resourceful, and sometimes arrogant.

But both are essential to win the battle. ⚔️ 

As an architect, your job isn’t to pick a side.

It’s to know when to pick the right tool for the job, build guardrails, and ensure Flow and Apex live in harmony - not in chaos. 🔥 

Because the true villain in this saga? Duplicated logic spread across four Flows, two Apex classes, and one overly optimistic admin.

SOUL FOOD

Today’s Principle

and now....Salesforce Memes