A LinkedIn article was published yesterday about hardcoding URLs in flows. The author is trying to solve a problem involving URLs that change depending on the environment.
For example, let’s say you have a screen flow that creates an account, and you want to display a link to the newly created account in the last step. To do this, you’d
- Add a screen element
- Add a display text component
- Type something like “Account ABC was created”
- Insert a hyperlink to the record Account ABC
In a DEV sandbox, the Link URL to account looks like
https://{yourdomain} -- dev.sandbox.lightning.force.com/lightning/r/Account/{AccountId}/view
While in PROD, it looks like
https://{yourdomain}.lightning.force.com/lightning/r/Account/{AccountId}/view
To solve this problem, the author uses {!$Api.Partner_Server_URL_630}. This variable displays a string you can hack to get a base URL. The resulting formula looks like LEFT({!$Api.Partner_Server_URL_630}, FIND('/service', {!$Api.Partner_Server_URL_630}))
While I applaud the ingenuity of this approach, a dramatically simpler one is to just use /lightning/r/Account/{AccountId}/view or even /{AccountId} as the hyperlink.
Yes, this approach works in all sandboxes and production.
The takeaway
Don’t hardcode URLs in flows, as there are better and more dynamic options available. Be sure to use the KISS principle when choosing which option is best.