Organizing Your Content

This function can be performed by users with Contributor role or higher.

Keep flows clean and easy to read

When a flow looks messy, contains too many shapes or has too much detail, users can easily get lost, which increases the time it takes to find the information they are looking for. Follow the rules and conventions outlined below to keep flows easy to read.

Is There a Maximum Flow Size?

Yes. For security and performance reasons, we have set a maximum flow size in ProcedureFlow. The editor will warn you when a flow is approaching its maximum size.

Performance

Every time a flow is saved, we process that data. The larger the flow, the longer the processing takes. In striving for the best possible user experience, you want to make sure that your pages save and load fast!

Our Recommendation

Keep your flows at a reasonable size by separating them into multiple flows and link them together as described below.

Use the spine

Use related flows

Avoid information overload by giving users ONLY the information they need, as they need it. Moving the 20% exceptions and their work instructions in related flows will keep your flows clean and uncluttered. It also allows more senior users to skip over those related flows for tasks they already know how to do, while keeping detailed instructions available for newer users who need them.

If you are designing a flow and come to a step in the process that you already know will be a related flow with lots of additional steps and detail, create the related flow then as a “placeholder.” You can dive in and design the new flow right away, or come back to it later.

If you are designing a flow that has grown to more than 15-20 shapes, go back to see what can be combined into a new flow.

Tip  When creating flows, pay attention to what you are naming them. When searching ProcedureFlow with keywords, the search will prioritize flows with the keywords in the title.

See Creating Related Flows from an Existing Flow

Link to an external website or to another flow

ProcedureFlow allows you to hyperlink to external websites, documents on SharePoint or MS Teams, or to other flows. For security reasons, it cannot link to documents stored on a shared drive.

Linking to other flows is helpful to call on generic process flows, such as Create Service Request or End Call, that may be used again and again throughout the flows. If you need to provide specific information along with it, you can link to the generic flow using whatever text you want, and include a bulleted list of the information that needs to be included for the user’s specific situation:

See Linking to Other Flows or External Websites

Including exceptions to the process

Trying to figure out how and where to fit exceptions into a process can be difficult.

One of the biggest mistakes is using bullet points to list exceptions outside of the flow, where they easily could be missed, as shown in the flow on the left below.

All steps of the process should be noted within the flow itself. The flow on the right is the same flow reworked to include the exception points of the "Don't forget" box within the procedure itself.

No Orphan Shapes

Every flow should have a finish: an end point, a “Go back and continue,” or an arrow that brings them back into the main flow. If you have an orphan shape at the end of a flow, users won’t know where to go or what to do next.