We’ve levelled up our public forms.

For our first release of 2022 we wanted to focus on improving the public form experience for form builders and users. 

Since a good form can be the backbone of a workflow, making sure our public forms are as user friendly as possible was a definite focus to kick start the new year. 

Big thanks to the teams at Upper Hutt City Council, Smart Environmental, SIT, Glenelg Shire Council for working closely with us on these features! 

NEW – Create custom subject lines for public form submissions

You asked, we answered. 

Previously when a public form was submitted the subject line would be ‘public form submission’. Not ideal when it comes to differentiating submissions. 

Now you can pull data from the form submission itself into the subject line as variables. 

This could be things like a name, an address or even the form submitters favourite dog breed – the possibilities are endless. 

This will save you time, helping you find the exact submission you were after at a glance. 

NEW – Upload files to public forms

We’ve also added the ability to upload files on public forms.  

Now members of the public or non-Flowingly users can submit forms with an uploaded file.  

This might look like photos of hazard submitted on a health and safety report form or a copy of the invoice on a rates rebate. 

The icing on the cake? All the attached files will be visible and downloadable from the completed step tab of the Flowingly runner.  

This will give you a full audit and access to all the files you might need – no more searching through email threads or endless folder structures. 

NEW – Attach documents to public forms

Since we’ve added the ability for your public form submitters to give you more info from the forms, we thought it only fair we allow form builders the same benefit. 

That’s why we’ve added the ability to attach documents to public forms.   

If you’ve ever built a public-facing form and thought ‘I wish I could upload a file to give a bit more context to the form’ now you can. 

Flow builders can now supply files to improve user experiences when submitting forms.  

This could be things like attaching a PDF of your company values on a customer complaint or your COVID-19 policy on a site visitor form. 

Just when we thought our developers were done for the year, they pulled a last release out of the bag.

And it’s a good one.

We wanted to focus on user experience features for this release, getting stuck into some of our most highly requested features.

Also, big shoutout to our awesome customers for helping us continuously improve the product with their feedback. 🤙

NEW – Pull variables into email subject lines

Nobody likes receiving emails. Receiving a bunch of emails with the same subject line? Even worse.

That’s why we’ve added the ability to pull values from previous steps into customisable subject lines.

Want to include the customer or employee name? Done. How about their address? Done.

You can now include almost every step field in the email subject line, including values from short text, dropdown list, option list, currency, email, number, date, date time and lookup fields.

NEW – Start flows from your library

Have you ever been in the library page of your Flowingly account and thought “wow, I’d love to be able to start a flow from here?”

Well, now you can.

Alongside the classic permissions, edit, clone and delete icons you’ll now find the start icon in your library under Actions.

NEW – Drag and drop file uploads

Yes, you read that right. We’ve brought in the ability to drag and drop files in both the file upload and attach document step fields.

While it may not seem like the most ground-breaking feature we’ve implemented, it’s a feature that has been highly requested and one that will hugely impact your day-to-day experience in Flowingly.

Now when you need to attach a file you can drag it from anywhere on your computer. Your desktop, your downloads, anywhere really.

With drag and drop, uploads have never been faster, or easier.

NEW – Approval notifications

Ever wanted to receive a specific email notification when an approval has been assigned to you?

Currently, when a step is assigned to you, you’ll receive the same notification for steps and approvals.

We’ve updated approvals to have specific notifications for approval steps.

Making it easier for your people to identify what is required of them. More working, less searching.

The Only-Relevant-Stuff release

For every 200 work emails you receive in the day, 144 of them are irrelevant 🤯

Given that we spend 2.5 hours on average on emails every day, that’s a whole lot of time being wasted on things that we shouldn’t be bothering with.

So, we thought for our 4th release of 2021 we’d focus on this. Cutting out the noise. The distractions. The pollution.

Note – this works with Slack too. 😀

NEW – Enhanced Instruction fields (or Variables as the techies say)

Flowingly has always had instruction fields. From the outset this field was designed to inform your employees of the action they need to take.

But we felt like it was missing something. It was very general. Not specific to that instance of the workflow.

We found that that people were regularly spending time scrolling through the history of the workflow to find specific pieces of information.

No longer.

Introducing Variables.

Variables within the Instruction field now allow you to pull information from previous fields into that Instruction. Now that field not only informs you what you need to do, but it gives you all the information you require to do it!

This saves time looking for previously submitted information, giving you everything you need to know, and ONLY that.

No more time distracted by information that has no relevance to you.

Our users are sure to get creative with this feature, but for now here are a few specific ways you can make the most of this new feature.

NEW – Optional Notifications

We’d always assumed that our users wanted to be notified when a Step is assigned to them.

It turns out this is not always the case.

In a world full of notifications, it is easy to glaze over. To get notification fatigue.

Every Step in Flowingly now gives you the option to toggle automatic notifications on or off. This means that you can:

Turn notifications off for a specific step when you feel there is no need for them.

Set your own custom notification using the Custom Email. Just turn off the automatic notification and build your own one.

This helps you cut out “inbox pollution” (a favorite term of our own Hervé Roy), giving you more control that ever over what is relevant and irrelevant for your employees.

Upgraded – Categories

Here’s something we always tell people when designing forms for their workflows:

Dropdown lists are great. But they don’t always provide the best user experience. Especially when half the options within the list aren’t relevant to the user.

Well, we decided to take our own advice.

Categorization in Flowingly was always handled with dropdown lists. This was fine when you only had 3-5 options. Anything over that and it became a time waster.

Now your Categories are displayed within a neat little list on the left-hand side of your screen.

This applies to your Start section, To Do list, Flows I’m In, Process Maps and Reports.

Reduce your time waste

There are all sorts of ways we waste time at work. Navigating email chains. Undertaking menial, repetitive tasks. Getting distracted by irrelevant information.

Flowingly reduces all of those and more.

With Flowingly, companies have reduced their employee offboarding from 40 emails down to 7. Others have reduced the time spent on their rates processes by 40%.

Microsoft Teams – Sending a company update

This one was universal. Previously we would make manual announcements in Teams about the completion of a step or workflow.

Think: Announcing that a new employee is joining the team. Confirming an update to a system. Announcing a big sale.

Now, this all happens automatically. Upon the completion of a step, Flowingly sends an update through teams, packed with only the important info.

You can see this in action in the video above.

Note – this works with Slack too. 😀

Trello – Creating and updating a project card

The clear favorite from our Customer Success team. You can now have submission of a Flowingly form or step create and/or update a Trello card.

Not just limited to Trello, this goes for any project management tool (think Asana, Jira or Teams).

Perfect for that point where process meets project.

Like an Idea to Initiative workflow, or the onboarding of a customer or contractor.

Not only can you create the card, but you can automatically populate it with relevant info and assign project owners.

This one is also shown off in the video above.

Xero – Creating a new supplier

Pretty obvious where this one comes from right? It’s been a gamechanger for our Finance team.

You can do all sorts of things in Xero using Flowingly Integrations, but the favorite has to be adding a new supplier automatically.

If you’re like us, when Capital Expenditure or OPEX is raised you may have a field where someone has to mark whether they are using an existing or a new supplier. If they select new supplier, that supplier then has to be setup in your billing system.

By integrating Flowingly and Xero (or Quickbooks) you can automatically create that new supplier from information captured in the Flowingly form.

No more double handling. No more copy-paste errors. 🤖

Excel – Adding a row to a spreadsheet

Everyone uses spreadsheets, but this one is a real time saver for our Operations team.

Most companies live in spreadsheets. We’re no different.

Excel. Google Sheets. SharePoint lists.

With the new integrations, you can still live in those spreadsheets. You just don’t have to manually update them.

Like when an employee slips on the floor and reports an H&S incident through the Flowingly mobile app. The incident spreadsheet is automatically updated. ✔️

Or when a new customer is signed up by the sales team. Onboarding started. The customer spreadsheet is automatically updated. ✔️

By integrating Flowingly with your spreadsheets, you can keep your spreadsheets as your system of record, without ever needing to double-handle the data ever again.

If you want to see this in action, check out the video up above.

This is just a small selection of the many actions you can take with Flowingly integrations. As you can see in the video, our Customer Onboarding workflow utilizes the Teams, Trello and Excel connections. This has helped us reduce copy-paste errors and freed up everyone’s time to focus more on the customer, less on the admin.

Introducing Flowingly Integrations

When it comes to reducing time spent on work-about-work, connecting your favorite tools is a no-brainer.

That’s why we’re so excited to announce Flowingly Integrations.

Flowingly Integrations gives you the ability to connect Flowingly with thousands of applications. That’s right. Thousands.

Here’s a quick look at some of the powerful ways your team can start to leverage Flowingly Integrations to maximize productivity, reduce errors and keep all your records up-to-date.

Populate an Excel or Google Sheet

Ever wished an Incident Report logged in Flowingly would automatically update your Incident spreadsheet?

Now it can.

As soon as your employee logs that incident, Flowingly allocates relevant steps and tasks to people around the organization. Using Flow Integrations, you can now have it automatically update your incident spreadsheet with each incident.

If your organization revolves around spreadsheets, this integration means that your employees don’t have to change the way they work.

Reducing system change? Check.

Reducing double handling? Check.

It’s a win-win.

Create a Trello card or board

Now this is exciting. Blending process management with project management.

When you’re kicking off a customer onboarding, there will be a standardized process. You’ll follow the onboarding workflow. Managing the handover from sales to customer success. Setting the customer up in your service desk. Making sure the invoice has been paid. That’s the process.

What about after the onboarding is done? At that point you’re entering project management territory. Things need to be more dynamic. More flexible.

Enter tools like Trello and Asana.

Using Flowingly Integrations, you can create project boards and cards automatically during the onboarding. No more double handling. No more copy-paste errors.

Free up your project teams to spend more time on projects, less time on admin.

Send a Teams or Slack notification

Make sure your teams are alerted to key updates in the channels they live in.

Flowingly natively supports email and mobile push notifications. With Flowingly Integrations you can now add Microsoft Teams and Slack.

With the integration, you will receive real-time notifications directly within Teams or Slack.

You’ll also receive the details that you need.

This could be a notification about a new supplier that employees can use. Including their catalogue and key contact details.

Or maybe it’s about an incident on the production floor. That a certain product run was found to be defective and has now been isolated.

Or just something super simple. An alert to approve your employee’s leave. That your new employee has signed their device policy. That your Capital Expenditure request has been approved.

Schedule a Calendar event

Employees often enter times and dates into workflow forms. They might be specifying when a new employee is starting. Or when a project is set to start. Or maybe they’re setting a date for an employee’s farewell.

With Flowingly Integrations, you can have those time/date fields automatically create a Calendar event in Outlook.

This is a great way to ensure your calendar is kept up-to-date and, more importantly, that everyone remembers key events.

+ Many more recipes

Create an invoice in Xero. Update a CRM contact. Create an employee in BambooHR. With over 1000 applications to integrate with, the possibilities are endless.

For information on how to set these integrations up in your Flowingly environment, reach out to your Flowingly Customer Success Manager.

If you don’t yet have Flowingly, but want to see how it fits into your tech stack, get your trial now.

Let your tools do the work

Flowingly Integrations will not only save you time, they will help your employees focus on quality work rather than admin.

From reducing errors to automating manual tasks. Record-keeping to real-time notifications.

We are thrilled to help future-proof your tech stack and fast-track your digital transformation.

As a result, we’re making the employee and customer experiences better, ensuring that people get the information they need, in the systems they use.

Process visibility is still way harder than it needs to be. Most organizations have no way to track submissions, tasks and approvals in real-time.

More importantly, their employees have to rely on their to-do list or Outlook Calendar to remind them what tasks they need to do.

Chances are, your organization is running into these exact issues today:

• You follow up on requests via email or Teams.
• You are missing SLAs because someone somewhere forgot to do their bit.
• You have NO IDEA what stage your employee and customer onboardings are at.
• You don’t have a complete picture of your process compliance, and neither do your auditors.

Want to change this? Keep reading to learn more, or get a trial now.

New: Current Step Visualizer

Ever wanted to pull up a Flow and immediately understand where each Step is sitting?

Or maybe you’ve hit the SUBMIT button and wondered what happens next?

Or even been tasked with a Step and need to quickly see what has gone on before?

Now you can.

With the Current Step Visualizer, you get an immediate visual of where every Flow is sitting. Each Current Step will be highlighted in blue.

This is super handy for complex Flows or Flows that span multiple departments. Think about your Customer Onboarding Flow. At a glance you can see that the Finance team has sent the invoice, but that it hasn’t been paid yet. That the Account Management team had a successful intro session and has booked their second onboarding meeting. That Support has completed all of their tasks and that the customer is set up in your service desk.

This means more transparency and visibility for both employees and senior management.

New: Step Reminder

In a perfect world we’d all have flawless memories. We’d never forget the tasks that we need to do.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case and we struggle to remember the hundreds of tasks that we need to do in our work week.

Introducing Step Reminders.

When building a Flow, you now have the ability to add a Step Reminder. In the event that the Step hasn’t been completed, this reminder will send the user a reminder at 9am X days from the day the Step was created.

An optional field, the Step Reminder will help your employees stay on top of critical tasks and plan their days ahead of time.

Combined with the new Current Step Visualizer, this takes your organization’s task management to the next level.

New: Cancellation Email

Ever wondered where one of your Flows went, only to realize that it was cancelled by someone else?

No longer.

With the new Cancellation Email feature, when a workflow is cancelled by an authorized user the initiator will receive an email notification to say so.

Like Rejection Emails, the Cancellation Email will also contain a mandatory Comment field where the user cancelling the Flow will need to explain the reasoning. They will also have the ability to include other users within the email to notify all relevant parties.

Upgraded: User Delete prompt for databases

Business Admins will be happy to hear that the User Delete prompt will now apply to databases!

Previously, when you deleted a user you would be prompted to reassign their Tasks and Approvals.

Now, if that user is also listed in a database, you will be prompted to automatically replace that user with a new one.

This makes system governance easier than ever before, especially for those with large user numbers and multiple databases.

Upgraded: Step Statuses

Most workflow tools give a basic status of an overall workflow. If it’s in progress, completed or rejected.

But that’s not much help when you have strict compliance regulations to meet. When the auditors want to know exact details. Like where and why things were rejected. Or why certain steps were abandoned.

When the auditors are looking through your Non-Conformance process you don’t want to have to clarify exactly what has happened at each stage.

With our Step Statuses, we aim to make your Flows tell the entire story.

The new Reject, Sent Back and Abandoned statuses give users a greater understanding of the history of a Flow. They can now see which Step a rejected Flow was sent back to, and which Steps were abandoned due to a rejection.

As a result, your Flow reports will include a more detailed audit trail than ever before.