Sneak Peek: Handle Record Delete triggers using Flow Automations

Traditionally, within Salesforce platform, only Apex triggers were equipped to handle record delete events. For any custom handling of delete actions, one had to create and maintain Apex code. Not to mention, be mindful of the best practices of handling deletions in bulk and displaying error messages.

Salesforce flows have been graduated to now handle on delete events for objects within Salesforce. So, now you can create a flow which gets triggered on record delete.

Step by Step Guide

Let's take a sample scenario (probably most used). Let's say you want to restrict any user to delete an Account of type Customer. Following are the steps to create flow

Step 1 : Create a flow of type Record Triggered Flow

Step 2 : Set Entry Criteria

1. Set Trigger to A record is deleted
2. Set Entry conditions to qualify only active customer accounts

Step 3 : Add new Custom Error

Add new element attached to Start element and select Custom Error element from the list

Step 4 : Setup Error Message

Add error message to the component and configure where error message should be displayed

Step 5 : Save and activate flow

(You probably don't need a screenshot for this)

Step 6 : Test and verify flow works

Tips

Error - while trying to deploy flow metadata

While retrieving metadata for flow, do ensure that you have correct API version, dependent on the components/features used within flow. For instance, if you create a flow which uses a Custom Error element but retrieve metadata using API version 56.0, you would notice Custom Error element metadata will be missing within flow metadata. 

Solution

Re-retrieve flow (example uses flow named test) metadata using API version 59.0 or above

sfdx force:source:retrieve -m Flow:test -a 59.0