In the Spring ’26 Release, Salesforce officially moved the Flow Execution Logs feature to General Availability (GA). That sounds like a good thing, but what does it actually mean for you and your Flows?
In this article we’re going to dig through the buzzword mumbo-jumbo and discuss what the update is and how Flow Logs can be used to improve troubleshooting optimization efforts.
1. Current State
As an admin your main two tools for troubleshooting Flows have typically been the Debug button in Flow Builder, and your Paused and Failed Flow Interviews menu. These tools are sufficient to get your Flows working in Production, but have three shortcomings solved by Flow Logs: Debug mode not accurately simulating the live environment, no insight into the path taken through Flows by successful records, and no insight into the efficiency of your Flows like average runtime.
While the Debug button in Flow Builder can identify elementary bugs before doing end-to-end testing, it can’t fully replicate a sequence of triggers in your live environment, and struggles with certain operations like changes to OwnerId, and junction objects like Opportunity Contact Roles.
The Paused and Failed Flow Interviews menu is great at showing you what happened to a record that got stuck in a Flow Interview, but doesn’t help an admin understand why a record took the path it did during a successful commit.
Lastly, these tools do not track aggregate information about run-time and success rates that make it easy to flag bottlenecks and inefficiencies at scale so you can build a more efficient environment. While features like “Flow Runtime Logs” have existed in various beta stages, they often lacked the retention policies and clarity needed for enterprise-scale troubleshooting.
These are among the main problems Flow Logs aims to solve.
2. What’s Changing?
This brings us to today, where Salesforce is moving Flow Logs from beta to general availability with the following enhancements:
- View Record Run: You can now trace the specific path an individual record took through a flow.
- Agentforce Integration: Flow Logs are now integrated with Agentforce, allowing the AI assistant to analyze execution logs and suggest specific fixes for failed branches or bottlenecks.
- Real-Time Analytics: See execution time per element and governor limit consumption (such as SOQL queries and CPU time) for individual runs, not just in the debug canvas.
- 30-Day Retention: Salesforce now provides a predictable 30-day retention window for Flow Logs by default, with options to extend this through Data Retention Policies.
3. Optimizing Your Automation Strategy
While Flow Logs provide incredible visibility, they are most effective when incorporated into a proactive maintenance strategy. Here’s how Ateko recommends leveraging this new power:
Proactive Monitoring
Instead of waiting for a dreaded Apex Exception Email, create dashboards for Flow Logs to monitor your most high-volume automations, paying attention to those consuming high amounts of CPU time, queries or DML statements.
Testing in Sandbox
As a best practice, ensure you are on API Version 66.0 or higher in your refreshed sandboxes. Activate your primary end-to-end flow tests and use the logs to verify that records are traversing the intended paths. This level of granularity is especially useful for complex branching logic in Data Cloud or Agentforce-driven automations.
Start Today
Save yourself the headache of responding to a broken process or incorrectly populated data by identifying improvements proactively.
By exploring the Flow Logs tab in Lightning Experience, you can get ahead of performance issues and ensure your automation engine is running at peak efficiency.
Is your team ready to move beyond fault emails? If you need assistance optimizing your environment or managing your Salesforce release cycle, Ateko is here to help. Contact our team of experts today.
