[SalesForce] Flow – How to retrieve first value of a collection variable

With Winter 18, Salesforce introduced a cool feature to grab the record count directly in the visual flow without the need to loop through it.

After a fast lookup,the record count can be easily fetched in a sobject collection variable and assigned to a number variable. Play around with the number variable directly. So finding out the number of open/closed/in progress opportunities gets more easy. Even you dont need to loop through the record set to get the count of records. You already have it before hand.

So for the above question, you can simply compare if the number variable is having null and decide what to do with it next.

In detail the design looks like this:

1. Perform a fast lookup with your required filters

2. Assign the record count to a sObject collections variable. (in screenshot: nofCases)

3. Use a Assignment step, to assign the variable to a number variable. (Point to note: the assignment variable should be of type number only to make use of equals count operator. In the screenshot, this is called testCount)

4. Voila! Now play around with the assigned variable :)

My apologies for my comment suggesting you use a set, as you can't specify the use of a set in a Visual Workflow.

You can however use the contains operator in Decision elements to determine whether an item in a collection variable contains the exact same value as a specified variable, or whether an item in an sObject collection variable contains the same exact field values as a specified sObject variable before adding them to a collection.

You'll want to do this sort of testing before adding sObjects from one collection to another collection to avoid this issue. See Flow Design Considerations for more on this.