By now, I’m sure you’ve read about the new Flow features coming in the Spring ‘26 release, but I thought it might be helpful to see them put to use.
In this demonstration, I’ll be upgrading an expense tracking app with the new Flow features in Spring ‘26. Follow along, and consider ways that you could use some of these features as we go.
The Scenario: Expense Tracking
This fictional client has built a very basic system to enable their users to create expense records, see them in a list view, and create new expense records. They’ve even got a simple Screen Flow to help simplify this process.
It’s a simple system – expense records are where the data is stored, as well as a handful of fields are used to capture the relevant information, and a Status bar shows the claim’s progress. There’s also a spot for the user to upload evidence of their expense, where it will be attached to Salesforce files.
Simplicity is key with this client. They don’t like overcomplicated pages full of additional unnecessary information or visual clutter. This is evident in the solution design, and they want to keep it that way for future enhancements.
Desired Enhancements
The biggest problem that the company is facing is that many users either forget to upload a file when they create the expense record, or the file fails to upload, and they don’t realise it while submitting.
There are a number of ways to solve this, but the company wants something visual that acts both as a reminder and a visual confirmation that everything has worked as expected.
In addition, the company has complained that their Salesforce environment feels extremely sterile. They want more flair and the ability to add some company branding to their user experience. “You can never use too much color!” was a common phrase during the discovery.
Finally, they want a new way to show their users where some of their more recent expense claims are sitting, too. Users tend to ask about their recent expenses and if they’ve been approved yet, so displaying this to them visually will help.
Historically, these things required workarounds, hacks, and third-party components to build. Spring ‘26 introduced a handful of new features that will change the way we do things. Let’s dive in and see what changes we can do natively.
Expense Tracking: Reborn With Spring ‘26
The key changes that we need to make, once again, are:
- A way to remind users to upload a file before they submit an expense, proactively (in other words, don’t wait until they see an error when trying to submit – remind them early).
- To bring the Screen Flow to life by adding brand colours to the screens and components.
- The ability to visually see where expenses are in the reimbursement process.
Let’s tackle them together, one by one.
Subtle Reminder to Attach a File
Currently, if a user forgets to upload a file to their expense record before submitting it, the system will only alert them after they’ve submitted it.
This isn’t ideal, as it requires the user to fill the form, click submit, and then get told they’ve missed a spot.
We’re going to change this in Winter ‘26 with the new Message component.
The Message component allows you to standardize the alert texts inside a screen flow. What I’m going to do in this scenario is add the messaging component in there twice – once to remind the user to add the file, and once more to show that the system has received the file.
Next, I’ll configure the component visibility on each of these so that the end user will only see one at a time – the warning will be visible if there are no files uploaded, and the success one will be seen when there are files uploaded. I’m doing this based on the upload component’s “fileNames” property, as you can see in the screenshot below.
This way, it’s blatantly obvious to the user before they click the next button that they’ve got to upload a file, and there’s feedback from the system that they’re ready to proceed when they’ve uploaded that file.
Add Color to the Experience
The clip above shows the Flow in all its functional glory, but… it lacks soul. It lacks a recognizable brand. This is something that was requested by the business – give the flow a lick of paint to make it stand out to users. This is where the enhanced styling tabs throughout the Flow come in.
I will warn you from the outset – not everyone is an artist. That’s not an insult; I’m saying it from experience. As always, with great power comes great responsibility; use your paintbrush carefully and sparingly!
There are two places where you can change the colours in your Screen Flow. The first one is the Screen itself (not any one component, but the actual Screen element).
To do this, click either the header, the footer, or a blank background space to select the screen. Then, you’ll notice the Style tab in the right-side panel – which you should select next.
Here, you’ll see all the different elements that you can change to style your Screen. There are a multitude of elements that you can customize, so make sure you read through each one carefully so that you know what you’re doing.
Looking toward the bottom (in the Set Footer Style section), you’ll notice that there are several options for changing the individual button colors. These allow you to change the background color, text color, and border color for three different button states: default, hover, and active.
After setting everything according to the brand guidelines, I moved on to the individual elements. According to Salesforce, you can style a select few components, including Display Text, Number, Long Text Area, Checkbox, Date, Date/Time, among others.
Similarly, there are a handful of elements that you can change, which differ slightly based on the component you’re working with. Make sure to read carefully when you are making changes, as it can be quite fiddly to work with. This is simply due to the granular controls that are given – it’s a blessing and a curse!
As you can see above, I’ve been able to apply some branding colors to the Screen and its components. Does it look better now? Debatable… but the business requested it, and it can now be done natively in Flow Builder in Spring ‘26, so that’s a win!
Display Visual Expense Process Tracker
Users have been requesting the ability to see where their expenses are currently sitting within the expense process, and they want this embedded into their current Home Tab.
Luckily, Salesforce has gifted us with the new Kanban Board component for Screen Flow in Spring ‘26. Below you can see I’ve pulled together a very simple Flow – we get the Expense records that belong to the logged-in user, add a fault path (of course), and then lead into a Screen.
You think the Flow is simple, wait until you see the main Screen element!
That’s right – the entire Screen contains a single component – the brand new Kanban component for Screen Flow. To build this screen, it was as simple as dragging the component onto the screen and giving it a data source (the Get Expenses element from earlier in the Flow). I also decided to hide the default Kanban header.
Once I’d done this, I needed to tell the Kanban component which field to use as the path along the top. I wanted to use the Status field that I built on the Expense object so users could see where their expenses sat in the process.
Finally, I configured the content that was to be displayed on the card itself. This gives the user a bit more context as to what the expense records pertained to, without needing to open them up.
That’s it! After testing the Flow, I published it and added it to the Home tab for the users so that they could see this information at a glance.
Summary
It’s one thing to get excited about these new features, and a totally different thing to see them in use! I sincerely hope that what I’ve demonstrated today has inspired you and got you thinking about ways that you can implement these features into your own orgs.
There are so many other Flow features that were included in the Spring ‘26 drop, and I highly encourage you to do some additional reading about just some of those features by reading this article.
