Know Your Flow Editor

Know Your Flow Editor

Overview

Flow Editor is a visual tool for creating, organizing, and controlling workflows that link various systems, applications, and data sources. It offers a drag-and-drop feature with pre-made flow units to define data movement, integration steps, automate tasks, and coordinate system interactions without requiring extensive coding skills.

Accessing Flow Editor

The flow designer can be accessed from the following locations:
  1. Connector Designer
  2. Automation Designer
  3. Message Log

Know Your Flow Editor Components 

Before you begin creating, modifying, or debugging the flow, familiarize yourself with the flow editor's key components. This section will guide you through all the elements and how to use them in a flow:
  1. Action Area
  2. Toolbar
  3. Flow Units
  4. Process Flow
  5. Units Properties Panel

Action Area

This area gives you quick access to key operations:
  1. Save Preferences: Save the layout of panels and your custom settings.
  2. Hide/Show Flow Unit: Toggle the visibility of the Flow Units section.
  3. Help: Open screen-specific help topics and related knowledge base articles.
  4. Save: Save any modifications to the unit settings or the flow as a whole.

Toolbar

A toolbar is provided to improve the flow's usability, and the following action items are available in the toolbar:
  1. Reset: Restores the flow or view to its default state, clearing any zoom, pan, or temporary changes.
  2. Undo/redo:
    1. Undo: Reverts the last action performed.
    2. Redo: Re-applies an action that was undone. 
  3. Zoom in/zoom out, reset zoom:
    1. Zoom In: Magnifies the view for a closer look.
    2. Zoom Out: Shrinks the view to see more of the flow.
    3. Reset Zoom: Returns the zoom level to the default (usually 100%).
  4. Fit to screen: Adjusts the zoom and position so the entire flow diagram fits within the screen's visible area.
  5. Collapse all Nodes: Minimizes all expandable nodes or groups in the flow to simplify the view.
  6. Debugging Tool:
    1. Play: This button runs the flow and lets you watch the process. Click on the button to run the process. Please note that the process will start from the beginning.
    2. Reset/Stop: This button stops the running flow.
    3. Run the next unit: This button enables you to proceed to the next unit in the workflow. You can either continue seamlessly if a breakpoint has been set within the flow, or you can opt to bypass the current pause and advance directly to the next unit. This functionality enhances your workflow navigation, enabling greater flexibility and efficiency in managing your tasks.
    4. Set Breakpoint: Use this button to strategically add breakpoints within the flow. This will allow you to create thoughtful pauses for debugging the process. Using this icon, you set multiple breakpoints in the flow.
  7. Search: Allows users to find a specific flow unit by name.
  8. Proficiency Level drop-down: Lets you set the difficulty levels for the flow designer.
  9. Toggel mini overview: Shows or hides a small overview map of the entire canvas, useful for navigation.
  10. Legend: The legend icon is provided on the right side of the toolbar. It gives the current status of the processing unit.

Flow Units

  1. Flow units in the flow diagram represent the building blocks of your workflow. Each unit represents a complete process.
  2. They are dragged into your diagram from the Flow Units section and are categorized by type. Expand the section to view the available units:
    1. General:
      1. Decision/For-Each Unit
      2. Repeat Until Unit
    2. Calls:
      1. System Call Unit
      2. Expansion Call Unit
      3. HTTP Call Unit
      4. FTP Call Unit
    3. Delegate:
      1. Component Unit
      2. Automation Unit
      3. Flow Unit
      4. Queue Unit
    4. Transformation:
      1. Mapping Unit
      2. Java Class Unit
      3. JSONata Unit
      4. XSLT Unit
    5. Store Operations:
      1. Key-Value Unit
      2. Documents
      3. Database


Process Flow Diagram

  1. The process flow is displayed in the screen's working area.
  2. You can zoom in, zoom out, modify the flow, remove units from the flow, add units into the flow, etc.

Unit Properties Panel

  1. Clicking any unit in the flow opens the unit property panel. 

  1. After clicking any unit, the unit's property panel is displayed. The property panel header and the property panel will display the three columns:
    1. Input: Data enters from various sources (e.g., user forms, sensors, APIs).
    2. Processing: Each system processes its part (e.g., validation, transformation, computation).
    3. Output: The processed data is passed to the next system or presented to the user.

Switch Panel to Bottom/Side View

  1. Click on the icon to change the property panel view.
  2. If the bottom view is shown and you click the icon, it will switch to Side View mode.
  3. Similarly, if you are in Side View mode and click on the icon, it moves to Bottom View mode.
  4. However, you can set the default placement from panel settings under the Settings module.


Hide IPO sections

  1. By default, all the sections will be displayed in the panel. However, you can hide and show sections of your choice in the panel.
  2. Click on any of the section icons to hide, for example, the Input section icon.

  1. The section is no longer available. Click the icon again to show the section.

Switch to Full Screen View

  1. Click on the Maximize icon to open the panel into full view mode.

  1. Click the Minimize icon to return to normal view mode.


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