Introduction to the Designers

Overview

The five Designers, or workspaces, for creating and editing logic are:

• Flow Designer
• Form Designer
• Rule Designer
• Report Designer
• Pages/Dashboard Designer

Flow Designer

A Flow is a logical process made with visual components, referred to as Steps, to achieve an automated result. These Steps can be customized with user-defined Inputs, Outputs, and other configurable Properties. 

A Flow by default has a Start and End Step. The Start Step has a line coming from it labeled Done, this line is called a Step outcome path. Steps can have multiple outcome paths. Outcome path A could lead to an entirely different set of Steps than outcome path B.  Flow Steps take data as an input, complete their respective function with the data, then pass it on as an output. Each subsequent step has access to all of the output data that was created in the steps before it. Inputs and outputs can be referenced in a variety of ways through the use of Mapping Types, which offer a range of customization for how the data is interpreted. 

Flows are most commonly created from scratch, but templates are available for this Designer Element as well.

It is necessary to have an understanding of how the desired process should work, what systems will be used, who the end-user is, and the expected results before building a Flow. 

Forms Designer

Forms are usable within Flows and Pages to provide interaction. The Form Designer builds pure HTML forms, and there are several different layouts to build on. The Form Designer is extensible using a Javascript-based API to provide additional user controls and these forms can be hosted either within decisions or direct links from outside systems or even embedded into outside based web systems.

Forms in Decisions have multiple purposes; not only do they operate as a user-interface on the front-end, but they also receive user input that passes as data through Flow Steps. Forms do not serve a logistical purpose if not contained in a Flow on the back-end. Even if a Form is configured with places for a user to enter information, the Form is not live and data is not moving unless it is called from a Step in a Flow. 

Forms are comprised of Form Controls that offer several different functions; buttons, file uploads, text boxes, and many more. Form Controls have settings that can be configured specific to their function, these settings are accessible in the Properties tab. Aesthetic changes like Form size, column/row size, font settings, appearances, and behaviors can be accessed in the Properties tab as well. 

Rule Designer

Rules are conditional logic crafted in if/then/else statements (Statement Rule), or more dense Rule types like Truth Tables and Matrix Rules. Rules are stateless declarations of decision making, where data is presented to the Rule and the Rule will result in some data or action being taken but they are always stateless. Flows can be used to tie rules together and provide states in a long-running transaction. Rules can be called via API and can also be combined into composite units called, Rule Sets, which allow users to have a number of rules to provide a much more complex answer to a problem.

Report Designer

Decisions includes the ability to aggregate and view data in a consumable way. Using reporting and dashboards, data can be reported on both inside Decisions and outside Decisions in the same environment. All the reports have the ability to have action context established on them, actions can be made on data from within a dashboard. 

Page/Dashboard Designer

An excellent way to display data outside of a Form or Report is through the use of a Page. The Page Designer uses a similar layout to Form Designers and allows administrators to put multiple data-reporting pieces together to create a Dashboard. 

Pages allow the user to view and interact with data that is not currently moving through a Flow. All User Interface elements are style-able via .CSS or .LES, so they can conform to corporate styles.