Recursive Process with Autolaunched Flow

In the old days of Salesforce, if a workflow field update occurred during a DML operation, the before and after triggers would for that object would execute a second time. But in the new world of Process Builder with autolaunched flows, how does the order of operations play out?

The Spring '15 documentation seems to imply that processes only fire once. The reason I say this is there is no corresponding explanation for processes in the same vein as the explicit explanation (shown below) for how a workflow rule can cause triggers to fire again.

As with many things in Salesforce, I like to trust and verify. And I found that Process Builder processes actually can cause triggers and the process itself to execute up to five (5) more times. I couldn't find this documented anywhere, but that seems to be the de facto limit on process recursion.

The proof

To prove this to myself, I decided to stage a manual test based on the following constructs:

• A custom object named TriggerEvent__c exists as a child to the Account object
• An Account trigger exists to create a TriggerEvent__c record before update
• A process exists that launches a flow, which increments the Num Employees value by one if Num Employees is not blank

Under this setup, when I updated an account and entered 100 for Num Employees, I actually ended up with 106 for Num Employees and six new child TriggerEvent__c records.