Possible to Break Out of a Loop in Flow Builder?

Question

Background

I've set up a nested loop, containing two loops in total, in a Flow:

If certain conditions are met while iterating through records in the loops, I would like the Flow to exit/break the loop (see A and B above). This is because the Flow has found what it's looking for, and no longer needs to continue iterating through records.

Questions

1. Is it possible to break out of a loop in Flow Builder? Maybe using an Apex Action?
2. If not, are there any issues with not terminating the outer loop, and simply continuing the Flow until it ends?
   • The inner loop must be terminated, otherwise it will not perform any iterations after the initial one. See Tim Shores' comment here.

Notes

• I wish to break out of the loop after finding what I'm after in order to make the Flow more efficient.
• I came across an idea related to this. Someone has suggested in the comments that you could break out of a loop by setting up a decision element inside it to ignore the loop element, and continue on with the Flow, which is how I've set up my Flow currently. However, as you may be able to tell, this doesn't actually terminate the loop.

Answer 1

Clearing a collection variable by setting the variable to null (or making it equal an empty collection variable of the same type) will terminate the loop, as there are no more records to process.

I have never tested what happens if you end a flow without completing a loop. I assume that it would be handled gracefully, but it does seem best to terminate the loop by clearing out the collection and therefore ending the flow properly.

Answer 2

It's definitely possible to break out of the loop with a decision and directing the flow out of the loop, as suggested in the link you provided.

I think in your case you should go directly to Create Record from the 'Applicable SP Role = ..' negative decision, instead of going back into the loop to wait for it to finish all iterations and check the variable after. And your "after last item" of the inner loop can go directly back to the outer one.

Also, I notice you "skip out" of the inner loop when you find something, but don't actually act on it. Which means that as soon as you find something that matches your condition you stop evaluating and might miss records that could make you get to your "create record" element. That may be right, maybe I just don't really get your specific example. Is the record to be created once for each iteration of the outer loop (max) or once in total?

Answer 3

Yes absolutely possible to break out from a loop. You just use a decision box inside the inner loop, when the decision results True (It might be False as well based on your logic),add an element that connects the decision outside of all the loop (Outer and Inner) and it will eventually exit from both the inner and Outer loop. In the picture below B section connects the decision to an element which is outside of the loops. If condition are not satisfied all the the loop executes number of element in outer loop X number of element in inner loop and take the path A .

Answer 4

Yed, but if we redirect from inner loop, again when we go to that loop from parent loop it resumes iteration from where it was terminated by redirecting to parent loop.

It looks like loops are static, doesnt start from entry one when we entered back without terminating or reaching Afterloop path.