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Automation components help you extend the functionality of Flow Builder by using Apex classes and Lightning components. There are three types of components that can be used with flow: invocable actions, flow screen components, and flow local actions. Let’s learn more about these components by looking at their code.
Sometimes the automation logic that you need stretches beyond the declarative capability of Flow Builder. Invocable actions give developers an opportunity to write any complex logic in Apex and expose it in Flow Builder in the form of useful declarative building blocks.
Let’s check out one of the invocable actions that has been installed into your org—the Clone Record List action. This invocable action is used to clone a list of records from inside a flow.
We haven’t installed all of the Automation Components packages for this project, so let’s navigate back to GitHub to explore the code for flow screen components.
automation. Click Explore on GitHub in the Automation Components app tile.
InputParameters and OutputParameters inner classes. Properties in each class are annotated with @InvocableVariableenabling you to use them to pass data into and out of the flow. // Wrapper class for input parameters
global class InputParameters {
@InvocableVariable(required=true)
global List collection;
}
//Wrapper class for output parameters
global class OutputParameters {
@InvocableVariable
global List collection;
}
bulkInvoke Apex method. By annotating it with @InvocableMethod we can now invoke it as a flow action.
InputParameters and OutputParameters classes in the execution of the bulkInvokemethod.@InvocableMethod(label='Clones a list of records' category='Collections') global static ListbulkInvoke(List inputs) { List outputs = new List (); for (InputParameters input : inputs) { OutputParameters output = new OutputParameters(); output.collection = input.collection.clone(); outputs.add(output); } return outputs; }
When accessing the invocable action from the Flow Builder, you will see that it has pulled through the label and description of the action as well as the input and output parameters that are defined in the Apex class.
Flow Builder comes with a number of screen components that you can use to create rich screens and to capture user interactions. As a developer, you can create custom screen components to enhance the user experience inside a screen flow.
Screen components can be created with Lightning Web Components (LWC) or Aura components. In this project, we focus on Lightning Web Components.
js-meta.xmlfile.
lightning__FlowScreen as a target, the component is made visible to the Flow Builder.
lightning__FlowScreen
A flow local action is an Aura component that executes an action in the user’s browser while using a screen flow. Unlike screen flows, a local action Aura component exposes no UI and is only a service component that interacts with the UI. This can be used to complete actions that modify the user interface or to retrieve data from a third-party system without going through the Salesforce server.