BanibrataChatterjee Flow and Platform Events
Platform Events are the canonical async bus for Salesforce. Flow supports both publish (Create Records on the PE SObject) and subscribe (Platform Event-Triggered Flow). This skill covers high-volume PE vs standard-volume, replay, and the failure modes when a PE-triggered flow errors.
When to Use
Decouple producer from consumer (reduce transaction size), fan-out to N subscribers, or cross-org signaling.
Typical trigger phrases that should route to this skill: flow publish platform event, platform event triggered flow, async flow notification, flow publish high volume event.
Recommended Workflow
- Define the PE with stable fields; prefer text fields for interoperability.
- Publish: Create Records on the PE SObject in any flow (record-triggered, screen, scheduled).
- Subscribe: Platform Event-Triggered Flow; select the PE; build actions.
- Error handling: subscribed flows retry on failure with a visible 'Failed' status — instrument.
- For high-volume PEs (>250k/day), choose High-Volume type; Monitor Setup → Platform Event Usage.
Key Considerations
- PE-triggered flows run asynchronously — no rollback of the publishing transaction on subscriber failure.
- Retention: 72h for Standard, 72h for High-Volume (both).
- PE subscriber flows share daily limits with other subscribers.
- Replay via replay ID requires CometD/Pub-Sub client, not Flow.
Worked Examples (see references/examples.md)
- Decouple Opp → Billing — Opportunity closed
- Fan-out notification — Case escalation
Common Gotchas (see references/gotchas.md)
- Assumed transactional — Consumer failure rolls back producer — it doesn't.
- Subscriber error silent — Retries exhaust; no alert.
- PE allocation exceeded — Publish fails with LIMIT_EXCEEDED.
Top LLM Anti-Patterns (full list in references/llm-anti-patterns.md)
- Treating PE as transactional
- One PE for too many different events
- Missing idempotency on subscribers
Official Sources Used
- Flow Builder Guide — https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sf.flow.htm
- Flow Best Practices — https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sf.flow_best_practices.htm
- Reactive Screens — https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sf.flow_ref_elements_screen_reactive.htm
- Flow HTTP Callout Action — https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sf.flow_concepts_callout.htm