Last years blog Clicks not Code with Visual Flow Custom Buttons has continued to be quite well received, so i thought i would explore what more could be done and address a few questions that have come up since. This blog does make some assumptions that you are already familiar with the approach from my previous blog.

This time i want to focus on using Visual Flows with list Custom Buttons, such buttons can be placed on List View layouts and Related List sections on Detail layouts. Salesforce also provides a means for the user to select specific records to process. These buttons apply to both Salesforce Classic and Salesforce Lighting Experience.

As before we are keeping in the spirit of Clicks not Code, well with a little bit of reusable Visualforce code. But don’t worry you can easily copy and paste to adapt with a few changes. Critically with this approach you don’t need to resort to JavaScript based Custom Buttons, which will no longer be supported in Lighting Experience.

Handling Record Lists from Custom Buttons

First things first, ensure you have created a SObjectCollection variable in your Flow and ensured its designated as Input. For this blog we are simply going to display a step in the UI for each selected record. Using the Loop and Screen elements. One thing to keep track of is the fields your referencing within the Flow, in this case i’m using Account Name and Annual Amount.

List View Custom Button Example

Lets get started with a Custom Button on the Account List View. When adding a List Custom Button you have two choices, do you want the user to be able to select records or not? If not, then your button will pass all the records in the List View (currently limited to 2000).

So if when creating your Custom Button you plan to select the Display Checkboxes (for Multi-Record Selection) option. Then create the following Visualforce page, changing the object name and list of fields accordingly. This will ensure selected records are passed to your Flow.

<apex:page standardController="Account" tabStyle="Account" recordSetVar="AllAccounts" >
    <!-- Add below each field you reference in your Flow -->    
    <apex:repeat value="{!AllAccounts}" var="row" rendered="false">
        {!row.Name}
        {!row.AnnualRevenue}
    </apex:repeat>
    <!-- Runs your Flow -->    
    <flow:interview name="SelectedAccounts" 
          finishLocation="{!URLFOR($Action.Account.Tab, $ObjectType.Account)}">
        <apex:param name="SelectedRows" value="{!Selected}"/>
    </flow:interview>
</apex:page>

IMPLEMENTATION NOTE: If you want to avoid bothering with changes between lines 3-6, simply re-query the records in the Flow using the Fast Lookup element. Thought it’s less efficient this way since your not leveraging the query made by Visualforce.

If you don’t want the ability for the users to select records and want all records, the main difference to the above is a change to the line 10, passing in the AllAccounts binding.

    <!-- Runs your Flow -->    
    <flow:interview name="SelectedAccounts" 
          finishLocation="{!URLFOR($Action.Account.Tab, $ObjectType.Account)}">
        <apex:param name="SelectedRows" value="{!AllAccounts}"/>
    </flow:interview>

Don’t forget to add your button to the List View layout, select some records and give it a try!

Related List Custom Button Example

In this case the Visualforce page is much the same, accept that of course your placing the associated button on the Layout of the parent object by editing the applicable related list section. The following example shows a button on the Opportunities related list on the Account object.

<apex:page standardController="Opportunity" tabStyle="Opportunity" recordSetVar="AllOpportunities">
    <!-- Add below each field you reference in your Flow -->
    <apex:repeat value="{!AllOpportunities}" var="row" rendered="false">
        {!row.Name}
        {!row.Amount}
    </apex:repeat>
    <!-- Runs your Flow -->
    <flow:interview name="SelectedOpportunities" 
          finishLocation="{!$CurrentPage.parameters.retURL}">
        <apex:param name="SelectedRows" value="{!Selected}"/>
    </flow:interview>    
</apex:page>

IMPLEMENTATION NOTE: Note that the above Visualforce page code uses a URL parameter retURL, which is not available in Lighting Experience. It still works, but leaves the user on the finish page.

Summary

For more information on passing values to Flows using Visualforce check out the docs here. With the exception of the retURL hack above, i’m pleased to see support in Classic and Lighting Experience. Though the later, has yet to obtain support for providing the record selection support, so only the all records use case is available.

At present Visual Flow styling does not quite look at home either in Lightning Experience, which made me wonder about trying SLDS styling with Flow’s CSS customisation abilities (i will let everyone known how successful this is!)…

Finally both these approaches will also work equally well with Automation Flows (aka Headless Flows), just in case, as with the example in my earlier blog you just want to do some kind of calculations without prompting the user.