Introduction
In the world of modern enterprise automation, the ability to coordinate multi-step, cross-team workflows is essential. That’s where Flow Orchestration Salesforce comes into play. If you’re using the Salesforce Flow Builder ecosystem and you want to move beyond simple record-updates or screen flows, Flow Orchestration Salesforce gives you a robust way to model end-to-end business processes with branching logic, parallel streams, user tasks, system automation and much more.
In this blog article I’ll walk through what Flow Orchestration Salesforce is, why it matters, how to use it (with practical guidance), and how you can leverage it within your organisation — especially when you’re providing a project management / PSA solution like Mission Control built on Salesforce. Let’s dive in.
What is Flow Orchestration Salesforce?
At its heart, Flow Orchestration Salesforce is an advanced layer on the Salesforce automation stack that enables you to coordinate a sequence of stages and steps, involving both system tasks (background steps) and human tasks (interactive steps), across multiple users, teams and systems. Salesforce+2Trailhead+2
Where a standard Flow (screen flow, autolaunched flow, record-triggered flow) focuses on a single thread of automation, Flow Orchestration Salesforce allows you to bring multiple threads together: you can define stages (e.g., Onboarding → Setup → Review → Go-Live) and within each stage define steps (e.g., assign a user task, send an email, update records, call an external system). merfantz.com+1
In other words: Flow Orchestration Salesforce acts like the conductor of your workflow orchestra — everything happens in the right sequence, with the right participants, and you have visibility over progress. Trailhead+1
Why use Flow Orchestration Salesforce?
There are many reasons why an organisation — particularly one delivering a PSA or project management solution — would benefit from adopting Flow Orchestration Salesforce:
- Complex business processes: When your workflows span multiple departments (sales → delivery → finance → operations) or systems, simple automation often falls short. Flow Orchestration Salesforce manages those hand-offs elegantly. Trailhead+1
- Visibility & monitoring: Since you define distinct stages and steps, you can monitor workflow runs, pause/resume them, view where bottlenecks occur. You obtain better governance. salesforcetutorial.com+1
- Human + system tasks: You can embed interactive tasks (screen flows) and background tasks (autolaunched flows) within the same orchestration. For example, assign a user to approve, then run a system update. Salesforce Ben+1
- Flexible branching & parallelism: You can design stages that run in parallel or sequentially, with conditional logic determining path. This enables more realistic modelling of processes (e.g., if amount > X go to extra review). Salesforce Ben+1
- No-code / low-code: For many scenarios, you don’t need Apex. You can build orchestration flows declaratively via Flow Builder. This accelerates delivery and lowers technical debt. salesforcetutorial.com
- Integration fit: Because Flow Orchestration Salesforce is built on the Salesforce Platform, it aligns well with native objects, the CRM, automation rules, and connects easily with your existing PSA or project management solution.
In short: if your processes are simple and linear, you might not need orchestration — but for anything more complex, Flow Orchestration Salesforce offers a leap in capability.
How to use Flow Orchestration Salesforce (step-by-step)
Here’s a practical walkthrough of how to use Flow Orchestration Salesforce, with key considerations and tips — tailored to a project management / PSA context like Mission Control.
1. Plan your business process
Before you open Flow Builder, map out your process in stages. For example:
- Stage 1: Project Initiation (collect scope, budget)
- Stage 2: Contract Approval (review by legal, finance)
- Stage 3: Project Kick-Off (assign resources, schedule)
- Stage 4: Delivery Milestones (monitor progress, escalate issues)
- Stage 5: Project Closure (handover, billing, post-mortem)
Within each stage, identify steps: some might be interactive (user tasks) and some automated (record updates, emails, external calls).
You are designing how Flow Orchestration Salesforce will reflect your real-world workflow.
2. Create the Orchestration in Flow Builder
In Salesforce Setup → Flows → New Flow → select Flow Orchestration (choose either Record-Triggered Orchestration or Autolaunched Orchestration). merfantz.com+1
- If you want the orchestration to start when a record is created or updated (for example, a Project record enters status “Approved”), choose Record-Triggered. SalesforceFAQs.com
- If you want to trigger manually or via custom button/API, choose Autolaunched Orchestration (No Trigger) and call it when required. Salesforce Ben
Then define the orchestration:
- Add Stages: each stage has criteria for completion (e.g., when all steps are complete or when a condition is met). SalesforceFAQs.com
- Inside each stage, add Steps:
- Interactive steps: require a user to complete a screen flow, e.g., “Legal Review Screen”.
- Background steps: automatic tasks, e.g., “Send Welcome Email”, “Update Project Status”. Salesforce+1
- Use Decision elements or evaluation flows if you want branching (for example, if budget > $500k, route to VP approval). Salesforce Ben
3. Configure work items and assignments
For each interactive step, you assign the user or queue who will perform the task. You also configure how the task appears in the UI — via the Work Guide component on the record page. When the user is assigned a work item, they’ll receive notification and the task appears in their workspace. Salesforce
From a Mission Control vantage, you might show the Work Guide component on the Project record layout, so assigned team members know their next action in the orchestration.
4. Debug and Activate
Before activating your orchestration, use the debug mode in Flow Builder to step through the process, view how stages and steps execute, fix errors. Salesforce Ben
Once you’re confident, activate the orchestration so it becomes live. Monitor first few runs to validate the logic.
5. Monitor and Manage Runs
Within Salesforce you can view orchestration runs (via the Automation Lightning App or via list views) to see current stage, duration, triggering record, etc. salesforcetutorial.com+1
If a run is paused or failed due to error, you can resume or cancel it. You can reassign work items if a user is unavailable. This visibility is key for complex workflows.
As you monitor, you might identify bottlenecks — e.g., a particular step where work items pile up — and iterate your orchestration accordingly.
6. Scale and Iterate
As your business processes evolve — additional review layers, new parallel tasks, external integrations — you can update your orchestration. Because it’s built on Flow, it remains maintainable.
From the Mission Control perspective, you may integrate your PSA data (projects, milestones, resources) into the orchestration: e.g., when project scope changes, trigger orchestration that hands off tasks to delivery team, finance team, etc.
Use-cases & best practices for Mission Control
Since your company provides Mission Control (a PSA/Project Management solution on Salesforce), here’s how you can apply Flow Orchestration Salesforce to augment what you deliver:
- Project Kickoff Process: When a project record in Mission Control is created with status “Approved”, trigger an orchestration that: assigns delivery manager to schedule kickoff meeting, sends resource allocation task, creates billing milestone, then moves to “In Progress”.
- Change Request Approval: When a change request is submitted, use Flow Orchestration Salesforce to assign tasks: lead reviews change, if value above threshold then secondary approver, then update project plan and notify stakeholders.
- Project Closure Checklist: Trigger orchestration when project status = “Completed” that assigns tasks: deliverable sign-off, invoice generation, post-mortem survey, resource release.
- Risk Escalation Workflow: If a project’s actual cost vs budget exceeds 10%, trigger orchestration to send alerts to PMO, schedule stakeholder review, initiate optional mitigation steps.
Best practices:
- Keep orchestration logic visible and documented (so non-technical stakeholders understand).
- Balance interactive vs background steps (avoid too many sequential interactive tasks which can slow down the flow).
- Use naming conventions for stages and steps (so the run logs make sense).
- Monitor and refine — orchestration allows you to spot process bottlenecks.
- Leverage the Work Guide component thoughtfully: position it in your Mission Control record pages so users know what to do next.
Conclusion
To wrap up: Flow Orchestration Salesforce is a powerful automation capability that takes your business workflows to the next level — enabling structured, multi-stage, multi-user, multi-system processes all within the Salesforce Platform. For a solution like Mission Control, built natively on Salesforce for project management / PSA, leveraging Flow Orchestration Salesforce unlocks significant value: you can embed real-world processes like onboarding, change-management, project closure, risk escalation as orchestration flows rather than ad-hoc automation. That means more control, better visibility, less manual hand-offs, fewer errors.
If you haven’t yet explored Flow Orchestration Salesforce, I’d encourage you to map a key process in your organisation, build a simple orchestration, monitor how it performs, and iterate it. Over time you’ll embed automation that drives consistency, efficiency and governance.
In sum: when you next ask how to use Flow Orchestration Salesforce, remember it’s not just about flows — it’s about orchestrating your entire process.
Mission Control is a comprehensive Salesforce Project Management software application. Make sure you check out our other Project Management Best Practices.
