Should I use Flow Orchestrator or Apex for complex multi-step approvals?

All answers to this question.

Flow Orchestrator is a game-changer for visibility. The "Work Guide" component on the Lightning page makes it very clear to the end-user what they need to do next, which you don't get with pure Apex. However, if your volume is extremely high (thousands of orchestrations a day), the cost can become a significant factor. For most mid-market companies, the "Interactive Steps" and the ability for an Admin to modify the logic without a deployment cycle far outweigh the per-run cost. If you need sub-second execution or complex mathematical validation, use Apex for those specific steps inside the Orchestration using an Autolaunched Flow.

   Answered 2025-03-05 by Michelle Rodriguez

How are you planning to handle "rejections" where the process needs to jump back two steps? I’ve found that "looping" back in Orchestrator can be a bit finicky.

   Answered 2025-03-22 by Gary Thompson

• Gary, that’s actually our biggest concern. We are designing the Orchestration with "Go To" elements, but it does feel like it's getting a bit "spaghetti-like." I’m trying to keep each stage as modular as possible so that if a rejection happens, we just reset the specific stage status. It's definitely more visual than reading through 500 lines of Apex code, but the logic flow needs to be airtight before we go live in production.

     Commented 2025-03-30 by Jason Whitmore

Orchestrator is great for "Human-in-the-loop" tasks, whereas Apex is better for purely system-to-system "headless" automation where speed is the only priority.

   Answered 2025-05-15 by Rachel Green

• Spot on, Rachel. The "Interactive Step" is really the killer feature here—giving users a specific UI task within a larger process is something Apex alone can't do easily.

     Commented 2025-05-20 by Michelle Rodriguez