Design Proposal: How Lightning Screen Field Components Work With ‘Next’ and ‘Previous’


As a user of Flows with screen components and automatic output mapping, I can add new screen components and have automatic output mapping on by default without running into the problem discussed here.

Changes to Lightning Component Screen Fields

Current behavior

If both the input and output have mapped values (either automatic or manual) the component ignores the input that’s mapped to it and gets assigned whatever that attribute most recently output to Flow was

Proposed Behavior:

For NEXT Transitions to a Screen with a Lightning Component field

On ANY ‘Next’ transition into a screen with a lightning component, the behavior for new Lightning Components will now be to always use the latest value of all mapped inputs, regardless of whether outputs exist, or how outputs are mapped. This is equivalent to the “Reset the Component” choice for a Previous transition.

For PREVIOUS Transitions returning to a Screen with a Lightning Component field

Behavior would be:

Flow will pass the most recent values it received (usually from the last time there was a 'Next' Transition away from this screen) back into the inputs. Any input mappings that were originally used to provide these attributes with default data from upstream in the flow will be ignored this time.