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How to Fix Salesforce Workflow Rule Deprecation
Inventory, prioritize, and migrate to Flow — without breaking automations that touch your integrations.
Salesforce retired workflow rules and process builder in favor of Flow. Existing workflow rules still execute but no new ones can be created — and Salesforce will eventually stop executing them entirely. The fix is to inventory your active workflow rules and processes (Setup > Workflow Rules or via SOQL on WorkflowRule and Flow), classify each by criticality and replacement complexity, then migrate to Flow using the Migrate to Flow tool — testing each migration in a sandbox against integration regressions before promoting. BuildForce inventories your active workflows and ranks the migration sequence by business impact and downstream integration risk.
Inventory Step
Run these SOQL queries to surface everything that's at risk:
SELECT Id, Name, TableEnumOrId, IsActive FROM WorkflowRule WHERE IsActive = true ORDER BY TableEnumOrId SELECT MasterLabel, Status, ProcessType FROM Flow WHERE ProcessType = 'Workflow' AND Status = 'Active'
Classify Step
For each active rule, classify by:
- Business criticality. Does this rule touch revenue, deal stage, or customer-facing fields?
- Integration impact. Does this rule write to fields that other systems read?
- Migration complexity. Single field update vs multi-criteria vs time-dependent action.
Migration Step
- 1. Open Setup > Workflow Rules > Migrate to Flow. Select rules ranked low-risk-first.
- 2. Test each migrated Flow in a sandbox with integration regression cases.
- 3. Validate execution order — Flow runs in a different order than workflow rules.
- 4. Promote to production via change set or DevOps tool. Keep the old rule deactivated for one sprint as a rollback safety.
- 5. Monitor the integration boundary for drift — BuildForce alerts on rejected writes that point to recently migrated automations.
FAQ
When does Salesforce stop running workflow rules?
Salesforce announced that workflow rules and process builder are in maintenance mode — no new rules can be created, only existing ones can be edited. The end-of-life date for execution has been pushed multiple times, most recently into the Winter 27 timeframe. Treat the deadline as a moving target and migrate proactively.
Should I migrate every workflow to Flow?
Not blindly. Some workflow rules are best replaced with Flow, others with Validation Rules, Apex triggers, or Approval Processes. Field updates that fire on simple conditions usually fit Flow. Complex multi-rule chains often deserve a Subflow or a refactor.
Will the Migrate to Flow tool handle everything?
Setup > Workflow Rules > Migrate to Flow handles most simple cases — field updates, email alerts, and outbound messages. Complex rules with multiple criteria, time-dependent actions, or recursive dependencies often need manual rebuilds. Always test in a sandbox.
How do I find which workflow rules are still active?
SOQL: SELECT Id, Name, TableEnumOrId, IsActive FROM WorkflowRule WHERE IsActive = true ORDER BY TableEnumOrId. For process builder: SELECT MasterLabel, Status FROM Flow WHERE ProcessType = 'Workflow' AND Status = 'Active'. BuildForce auto-generates this inventory with business-impact ranking.
What breaks if I migrate too aggressively?
Three risks: (1) timing differences between workflow-rule and Flow execution order, (2) recursive trigger loops when Flow fires Apex that fires another Flow, and (3) email alert templates not carrying over cleanly. Always migrate in a sandbox first, run regression tests on integration boundaries, and stagger rollout.