Can Salesforce Flows Support Reporting and Visualization?

Reporting is one of the strongest features of the Salesforce platform. With powerful standard tools like report builders and dashboards, you can analyze and visualize your data to make informed decisions. But even if you’re a reporting pro, you’ve probably hit limitations, especially when your data isn’t structured just right. That’s where Salesforce Flows come in.

Flows can act as the bridge between raw data and clean, report-ready insights. They help you reshape, clean, tag, and pre-calculate data to support reports that would otherwise be difficult, or even impossible, with out-of-the-box functionality.

What Can Flows Do To Support Reporting?

1. Clean and Normalize Data

Clean data is critical for accurate reporting. As the saying goes: garbage in, garbage out.

Example: Use a Scheduled Flow to remove special characters from phone fields or align picklist values with standard text strings (e.g., “If text contains ‘partner’, set Picklist = ‘Partner’”).

 2. Pre-aggregate or Pre-calculate Metrics

Pre-calculating key business metrics improves report performance and clarity.

Example: Calculate metrics like “Customer Lifetime Value,” “Average Deal Size,” or “Last Activity Date” on a recurring schedule and store them in custom fields, ready for standard reports and dashboards.

3. Flatten Relationships for Easier Reporting

Nested relationships often make reports complex. Flows can copy parent data to child records for simpler joins.

Example: Copy Account Tier or Owner down to Opportunities to group and filter more easily in reports.

4. Create Snapshot Data or Summary Tables

Salesforce’s native Reporting Snapshots can be limiting. Flows give you more flexibility.

Example: Use a Scheduled Flow to log daily or weekly snapshots into a custom object. Track trends over time without needing external tools.

5. Tag Records for Cohort and Funnel Reporting

Tagging allows you to group records dynamically for custom analysis.

Example: Tag Leads with the Campaign that converted them or create a “Status Change Date” field to analyze pipeline velocity or case resolution trends.

6. Automate Report Visibility Logic

Sometimes you only want to report on exceptions.

Example: Use a Flow to create a record in a custom “Exceptions” object for Opportunities with no activity in 30+ days. That object can power an at-a-glance report of stale deals.

Can Flow Help With Data Visualization Too?

Absolutely. Screen flows can present data visually using reactive data tables. This is especially powerful when paired with Lightning Web Components (LWCs) or AppExchange chart components.

 Example Use Case: Opportunity Explorer

When a user selects an Opportunity in a data table, a Flow can reactively display related:

• Opportunity Contact Roles
  
• Contacts (matched by Contact Id)
  
• Opportunity Products
  
• Product information
  

All on the same page.

Limitations and Workarounds

Out-of-the-box data tables don’t resolve lookup names, so displaying Opportunity Contact Roles alone only shows Contact Ids.

Workaround: Display two side-by-side tables, one with OCRs, one with matching Contacts, sorted by the same Contact Id to align the data visually.

How to Build It

1. Create a Screen Flow with data tables for user interaction.
   
2. Build an Autolaunched Flow to fetch related data: OCRs, Contacts, Opportunity Products and Products.
   
3. Execute the Autolaunched Flow using a Screen Action, and pass the user’s selection to display data reactively.

This design uses five interconnected data tables to visualize Opportunity-related information seamlessly.

Watch this video to learn how it is built.

Conclusion

Salesforce Flows are not just automation tools, they’re enablers of smarter, more flexible reporting. By combining flows with your reporting strategy, you gain control over your data’s structure, visibility, and presentation.

Whether you’re prepping clean fields, building snapshot summaries, or displaying interactive tables in real-time, flows make it possible.

Master both Flows and Reports to get the most of Salesforce.

To learn more, visit SalesforceBreak.com for tutorials, use cases, and hands-on videos.