when it’s appropriate to create a flow?

Flows are a no-code solution

Flows can be better described as visual coding—they’re declarative
Flows are useful for two major use cases: behind-the-scenes automation and guided
visual experiences.
You have a bunch of automation tools at your disposal: formulas, validation rules,
processes, flows, and Apex.

Difference between Lightning Flow, Flow Builder, and flows ?

Lightning Flow—the product that encompasses building, managing, and running flows
and processes.Lightning Flow product includes multiple tools.
Flow Builder—a point-and-click tool for building flows.Flow Builder, helps you
create flows.

Flow—an application that automates a business process by collecting data and doing
something in your Salesforce org or an external system.

Visual Workflow retired product for designing, managing, and running flows. Visual
Workflow has been replaced by Lightning Flow.

When should you build a flow?

When simpler tools don't fit your requirements

What's the difference between Lightning Flow and Flow Builder?

Flow Builder is a part of Lightning Flow
the Lightning Flow product includes multiple tools. One of them, Flow Builder,
helps you create flows.

Describe the building blocks of a flow ?

Every flow is made up of three building blocks: elements, connectors, and
resources.

Elements (1) appear on the canvas. To add an element to the canvas, click and drag
it there from the toolbox.
Connectors (2) define the path that the flow takes at runtime. They tell the flow
which element to execute next.
Click and drag connectors from one element on the canvas to another.
Resources (3) are containers that represent a given value, such as field values or
formulas. You can reference resources throughout your flow.
For example, look up an account’s ID, store that ID in a variable, and later
reference that ID to update the account.

List the categories of flow elements.

Flow elements can be broken down into:
Screens, logic, and actions

Screens
Display data to your users or build a form to collect information from them with
Screen elements.
Display text or images to your users such as text box, radio buttons , upload a
file etc
flow screens, like custom navigation or a data table, install third-party
components or work with a developer to build custom ones.

Logic
Create branches, update data, loop over sets of data, or pause until a specified
time. Logic operates only in the flow.

Actions
Actions instruct the flow to do something outside of itself, such as in the
Salesforce database or in an external system.
Flows can look up, create, update, and delete Salesforce records.
They can also create Chatter posts, submit records for approval, and send emails.

what is Flow Resources?

Resources are placeholders that you reference throughout your flow.
For example, look up an account’s ID, store that ID in a variable, and later
reference that ID to update the account.

List the resources available in Flow Builder

Constant
Choice, Picklist Choice Set, or Record Choice Set
Formula
Text Template
Variable

choice set can generate options with:

Filtered records
Picklist field values

A variable:
Stores a value that you can change in the flow

Describe what a flow variable is

a variable is a placeholder for a value
variables are the only resource that can change during the flow
the field value must be stored in the flow using a variable.

What type of data should the variable store?

Text
IDs, descriptions, and other text or long text data.
Record
Field values from a record, such as an opportunity. When this data type is
selected, you create a record variable.
Number
A numeric value.
Currency
A currency value.
Boolean
A yes/no value, such as whether a checkbox was selected.
Date
A date value.
Date/Time
A date and time value.
Picklist
A picklist value.
Multi-Select Picklist
Picklist values, separated by semicolons.
Apex-Defined
Field values from an Apex class. When this data type is selected, you create an
Apex-defined variable.

How many values should the variable store?

variables store one value that’s compatible with the selected data type. If the
data type is Number, the variable stores one numeric value.
If the data type is Record, the variable stores field values for one record.to
store multiple values in one variable
you can enable it to do just that with the Allow multiple values checkbox

Should the value be available from outside the flow?

Some variables get their values from inside the flow
variables get their values from outside of the flow

Create a Text variable to store:

Descriptions
Long text data

When in doubt, you should configure a variable so that it's:

Available for input, and not available for output

Screen components are available in three categories.

Input includes standard components that request information from the user.
Display includes standard components that display information to the user.
Custom includes components that you or someone else have created.
Install them from AppExchange or a third-party library, or work with a developer to
build your own.

Flows have two different runtime experiences: Lightning runtime and Classic
runtime.
Like its name suggests, Lightning runtime looks and feels like Lightning
Experience,
while Classic runtime looks and feels like Visualforce.