Flow Editor

[darrenmothersele]

Future plans for creating and editing flows.

• Could we add ability to have multiple Flows open at the same time. Maybe tabs in the interface to switch between? pros: multi-tasking, and would make development of new workflows easier if could keep existing ones open for reference without having to manage multiple browser windows.

• Visualise the hierarchy of a Flow in the editor. This would allow editing of embedded Flows (or other objects) rather than just being hard coded to edit the full workflow that is in view.

[darrenmothersele]

Editing of nested flows gets tricky using the current Flow editor, for example:

1) this is just a simple example of a flow within a grid 2) within the grid config hides the flow for the "workflow cell renderer" 3) the cell renderer takes a "blocks" param which is an embedded flow 4) each of the buttons within the "actions" block also have a "blocks" param with an embedded flow for when the button is pressed

[darrenmothersele]

Proposal: split the editor pane into three parts:

1) The Flow metadata (as currently seen at the top) 2) A simplified "tree" view of the current flow 3) A properties pane below for the block currently selected for editing

This should allow a better control over the flow hierarchy, and easier editing of the blocks deeply nested within the Flow.

[totorogendut]

Dropping off my suggestions here, which is mostly UX improvement:

1. Allow user to name Flow block

If I'm trying to work with a Workflow with multiple Mapping blocks, there's a slight unnecessary mental work to identify which one of the Flow that I'm trying to edit. Sometimes this can even opening and closing the blocks several times until I found the one I'm looking for.

2. Allow Flow to show error states

EXAMPLE:

Show problematic flows with abnormal state (throwing error, null input from previous block, etc) will help users quickly assess and prioritize where they should put extra care (which also probably can play quite nice with #135). This can be automatic, but I think there should be a button to validate Flow on demand since a few glaring red blocks would be scary for first time users who haven't a clue what was going on.

3. When opening "Create a new Task", put Flows into separate categories

EXAMPLE:

I'm still hovering for tooltips all over the Flow icons to find something I wanted...

4. (Bug & Enhancement) Updating HTTP Flow doesn't refetch data with new endpoint

But dragging the order of the Flow does refetching the API.

[darrenmothersele]

some great suggestions here, thanks

[darrenmothersele]

• add a version number to the config JSON in preparation for any upgrade to the flow engine. we should think about automatic migration of flows between versions (upgrade) when available.