Orlando: Flow Designer

#Orlando Release , #Flow Designer , #SLA , #Flow , #Subflow

Dave Slusher

3 minute read

Orlando Flow Designer Changes

The Orlando release, as with every release since the original introduction, features a number of new features and improvements in Flow Designer and IntegrationHub. In this post I will look at Flow Designer specifically with a future post covering InterationHub.

Create a flow with an SLA Task trigger

In Orlando there is a new trigger type SLA Task and new actions that work with SLAs. This allows for SLA based logic to be written and maintaqined in flows. You can create a flow, set the trigger to SLA Task and then set actions inside the flow to wait for certain percentages of the SLA. If you want to trigger some logic based on the SLA progress, you can now do all that inside flows.

Run a flow or subflow dynamically

Dynamic Flows are newly introduced in this release. This allows for the use of runtime data to determine which flow or subflow to call. For example, you may have a Flow that provisions a cloud based VM. Based on a field in the request record, namely that of the service, you may call different subflows, such as “Create New Azure VM” or “Create New AWS VM”. The subflow can then be called via a template which contains a name reference like “Create New <datapill for service> VM”. At runtime, the value of the records will be resolved and the proper flow or subflow called by name. This can greatly simplify logic when branching off values of records.

Transform data pill values with transform functions

Orlando introduces transform functions for data pill values. It has previously been a common pattern to have to create an action to take data in one form and change it to another - like rewriting a date format. This could add to the friction of writing flows. Now many of these simple cases are handled across a number of data types and use cases including:

Test a flow by changing field values

In Orlando you can test a flow that triggers on updates by entering a current and previous value. This should make testing much easier than finding actual records that contain the data you want.

Conclusion

As always, there are many great features added to Flow Designer in the Orlando release. It continues to be an ever-improving mechanism for building logic and behavior in an understandable and maintainable form

Keep watching this blog for more posts about all the new developer focused features of Orlando. In a few weeks I will post one specifically about IntegrationHub. Good luck and happy developing!

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