How to create a flow and make it available

Use this procedure to create a flow and make it available to application developers.

Planning and design

Confirm that the properties and class structure you defined for your application are sufficient to support your flow processing.

Refer to Designing Your Application with SmartBuild for important flow creation concepts and guidelines. This book explains the terminology involved and how to do the off-system initial design of your flows.

If you choose, sketch out the flow on paper, or using Visio offline to create a mockup or flow shell.

Building the flow rule

Follow the instructions here to create your flow so that the processing steps you define can be carried out at runtime.

1. From the Application Explorer, locate the work type.
2. Click the work type icon (). Right-click and choose New > Process > Flow from the context menu.
3. Complete the New form. For the Applies To key part, accept the work type. In the Flow Type field of this form, enter a name that describes the purpose of the flow. Start the name with a letter and use only letters and digits.
4. On the Flow form that appears, click the Flow Editor toolbar button () to open an empty Microsoft Visio form titled with the name you provided in the Flow Type field. The system automatically inserts the Flow starter shape at the top of the Visio page. It displays the class and the Flow Type label you specified.
5. You can click the Draft button () to enter draft mode, or work in normal mode. In draft mode, your flow can refer to activity rules, decision rules, properties, and other flows that do not yet exist. (A draft mode flow rule can serve as a specification or plan. You can save a draft mode flow rule, but cannot run it. Update the flow rule later and turn off draft mode when the other rules you need are available.)
6. Working in Visio, begin by creating the primary paths and then create the less important flows. Use the SmartShapes from the left side of the Visio form. As you drop each shape onto the Visio page, provide the additional Properties details as prompted.
7. On the Process tab, check the Creates a new work object? box if you want this flow to be available to application users in the New area of the Process Work workspace. In this case, select and enter the Short Description field carefully. Choose words that help an application user select and enter new work objects for this flow. Make certain the Short Description values for starter flows in your application are clear and distinct.
8. On the Process tab, check the Can be added to a work object box if this flow might be started by a user for an existing open work object. When you select this box, this flow becomes visible as a choice in the  Start a New Process   button on harness forms. Both the current flow execution and the selected flow execution operate simultaneously on a single work object.
9. When you finish updating the flow rule, click the Return toolbar button () at the right of the toolbar to save the flow. Then click the Save toolbar button () to save the Flow form.

	flow
	About Flow rules Flows — Concepts and terms How to set up Visio Process Commander documentation
	Atlas — Standard flow rules

Process category