How Record Edits Can Impact Time-Based Workflows

While troubleshooting an issue with scheduled paths in Salesforce Flows, we came across a behavior that can have a big impact on automation. According to the official documentation, time-based workflow actions remain in the queue until they are executed or the record no longer meets the workflow triggering criteria. If the record no longer meets the criteria, an edit to the record is necessary to remove the scheduled action.

For flows with scheduled paths, we observed the following behavior:

• If you deactivate a flow, the workflow actions remain in place—as long as you don’t edit the related records.

• However, if you update any field on those records (even one completely unrelated to the flow’s logic), the related workflow actions tied to that flow are immediately removed —even though the record still meets the criteria.

This finding indicates that editing records while a flow is deactivated can unintentionally clear workflow actions that were meant to run. On the flip side, if you ever need to force-remove workflow actions from the queue—even when the records still meet the criteria—deactivating the flow and making an edit achieves just that.

Understanding this behavior can be particularly valuable. It highlights the importance of planning record updates carefully when working with flows that include scheduled paths. Hopefully, knowing this will save someone time troubleshooting unexpected automation issues!