Creating a Workflow

Workflows provide step-by-step guidance within an application. They act like a GPS that takes you on a journey to complete your day-to-day activities. Workflows are a recommended solution in the following cases:

• a user is not familiar with the process, 
• a process that involves multiple steps that should be performed in a specific order, or
• rarely used process.

To start creating Workflows, install the Apty Studio on your computer. Click here to learn more about the Apty Studio.

The following instructions set explains the procedure of creating Workflows, and consists of 3 steps: 

• creating a Workflow,
• adding steps to the Workflow, and
• publishing a Workflow.

To create a new Workflow:

1.  Open the Apty Studio application and select the hosting application you plan to work with. The Apty Studio menu opens.

2.  Click on the Workflows icon. You are redirected to the list of the Workflows available for this hosting application.

3.  To start creating a new Workflow click the +(Plus) icon at the top right corner of the Studio.

4.  Enter Workflow name and description in the respective fields and click Next at the bottom of the Studio.

To add Steps to the Workflow:

Once the Workflow is created, action steps can be added to it.

1.  Snap the Studio and browser window into organized tiles by clicking the Adjust  button at the top right corner of the Studio.

2.  In the hosting application navigate to to the page where the Workflow should be started.

3.  At the top of the Apty Studio click Select Element to define the element on the screen where the balloon will point. The control is transferred to the browser window. Hover over the element you want to start the flow in the hosting application and click it. An Apty balloon will be attached to the selected element of the hosting application.

In the example on the screen below the Username field was selected as an element to further work with.

NOTE: Any interactive element can be selected as a target element:

• an input field,
• a button, 
• a checkbox,
• a drop-down list, etc.

4.  To change the selected element, click Reselect Element and repeat Step 3.

5.  Compose the hint text for the balloon. Steps content may vary from simple one-line hints (for example, "Enter username") to a more complex instructions that may combine text, hyperlinks and images depending on the complexity of the task. The standard toolbar at the top of the text area provides basic text styling (bold, italic, heading, font, and alignment). 

The font can be defined for a given application globally at Admin Console > on the left side bar select application > Customization > User Interface. In the Typography field select a default content font for this application. 

NOTE: If the toolbar at the top of the text area is invisible, click the text area and at the bottom right corner of the text area the T(Toggle Rich Text Editor) button appears, click it to access the styles toolbar.

 

6.  Assign an instructional element with the unique name in the NAME field. The system automatically populates it with the element label text, but you are free to change it to the name of your choice. Descriptive step name is helpful when a Workflow is added to a Launcher or Announcement, since it can start from a selected step as opposed to playing the whole flow. For more details refer to the following articles:

• Creating a Launcher
• Creating an Announcement

7.  Choose how the end user should proceed to the next step in the ADVANCE ON section:

• Next Button: When the user clicks on the Next button on the balloon, the flow advances to the next step. 
• Click on the element: The flow advances to the next step when the user clicks on the element (i.e., the element on which the step was built). 
• Mouse over the element: The flow advances to the next step when the user moves the cursor over the element.
• Change in element: The flow advances to the next step when the user changes the data in the element; for example, change in value of drop-down lists or checkboxes.
• Input in element: The flow advances to the next step when the user enters any value in the element; for example, a text field.

Apty clients or partners also get the option to enable more than one Advance-on option depending upon the use case. For instance, if you select both Mouse over the element and Click on the element as Advance-on options for the workflow, then users can either click on the element or just hover over it to go to the next step of the workflow.

8.  Apty offers step customization to visually match the design of the client application. Upon selecting an element and its highlight options, it is now possible to choose the border color from the palette and preview it live:

• Select the target element HIGHLIGHT OPTIONS from the following: None, Highlight, Blinking, Focus.

• Color choice is available for the Highlight and Blinking Highlight Options as shown on the screen below.

• There are 12 options for positioning the balloon with respect to the element to which it belongs. Balloon positions can be adjusted and previewed live.
  

9.  Optionally, check the boxes for required EXTENDED OPTIONS:

• Auto Scroll to Balloon: Workflow scrolls the page automatically in alignment with the step balloons.
• Optional: Workflow skips this step and moves to the next step if this element doesn't exist. Also clients or partners can configure the time taken to skip the step by adding the time (in seconds) in the text box provided below the optional check box.
• Display when outside the viewport: This option enables the user to see the balloon even if 100% of element is not visible on screen.

10.  If this step starts from a new page with respect to previous elements of a Workflow, check the Mark as Entry Point box.

To Mark as Entry point, first we need to define the page from which we have to start the balloon or workflow from. To define a page we need to Create a Frame. To know about how to create a frame, refer to What is a Frame and how to create it.

11.  Click Next Step to repeat the procedure for the new element. Alternatively, click Done, if no more steps should be added to the workflow.

To publish a Workflow:

When all the Workflows are created, we can Publish either through Apty Admin console or also through Apty Studio and are ready to be used.

For publishing validation through Apty Admin console or through Apty Studio of version 3.x and prior, refer to Publishing Process.

For publishing validation through Apty Admin console or through Apty Studio of version 4.x, refer to Publishing Process.

For more instructions on Managing Workflows refer to:

Workflow Languages (Translation / Localization)

Delete a Workflow