New Flows page

New Flows page

April 28, 2022

New Flows page with categories

The Flows page has got a major overhaul with a new look and feel, improved usability and the addition of categories to help you organize your flows. You can now create your own hierarchical categories in up to three levels and assign flows to these categories.  Even though the look and feel is different the main concepts are the same and we hope you will find your way around the new page. Below we have summarized the changes. There's also a video where we go through these changes.

Basic navigation

  1. Main section lists flows and these can be expanded to see versions, just like before.
  2. In addition to sorting on name and saved date you can now also sort on number of deployments and categories.
  3. The tabs used to access the Flow Apps and Resources pages are now moved to a menu along the left border.
  4. Infinite scrolling of the Flows list has been replaced with paging,. You find paging controls both at the top and bottom of the flows list.

Main Flows list

  1. Description added on the top-level flow, in addition to descriptions in each version.
  2. Action icons replaced with menu accessed through the three vertical dots to the right of each flow.
  3. Flows that have a draft version (editable) will have an arrow icon on the right to open the flow in the Flow Studio editor.
  4. "Deployments" column show the total number of deployments of any version of each flow.
  5. New flows can be created using the "+" button (similar to the old "+ New Flow" button).

Flow versions

  1. Action icons replaced with menu accessed through the three vertical dots to the right of each version.
  2. Arrow icon on the right to open the version in the Flow Studio editor.
  3. The "Deployed Nodes" column shows the status of your deployments of each version.
  4. Deployments are now managed through a separate pop-up window accessed from the menu ("Manage Deployments") or by clicking on the "Deployed Nodes" column.
    1. As before the first view ("Nodes") shows a list of Nodes that can be selected for deployment. Use free text or labels to filter the list and mark the Nodes you want to use for deployment.
    2. Use the "Deploy this version" button at the top of the list to deploy to the selected Nodes. The rightmost column will be updated when the flow has been deployed.
    3. New view on second tab ("Deployments") shows currently deployed versions of this flow. Use this view to update existing deployments to this version or to undeploy any existing deployments. Here you can also see detailed status of your deployments.
  5. Parameters are now managed through a separate pop-up window accessed from the menu ("Manage Parameters") or by clicking on the "Parameters" column.
    1. Updates of parameters are now made per module. When a module is expanded you can make several changes but they will not take effect until you save. Changes can also be discarded with cancel.
    2. All settings are now shown, even when the values are too complex to show in the list. These settings will have a link ("Display value") that opens a side panel.

Categories

    • Categories are managed and used through the new left-hand panel.

    • At the top you find pre-defined (and fixed) categories that are managed by the tool and can be used as quick filters:

      • All - Show all flows, i.e. don't use categories (just like the old Flows page).

      • Favorites - Show your favorites (similar to the old switch).

      • Deployed Flows - Show only flows that have at least one deployed version.

      • Drafts - Show only flows that has a draft (editable) version.

    • Under the "Categories" header you can create your own categories.

      • Use the "+" action to add a new category. By default it will be added at the top level, but you can also place it in a sub-category.

      • Use the action menu to the right of any existing category (three vertical dots) to add a sub-category or to change the name.

      • Up to three hierarchical levels supported.

    • Assign existing flows to categories using the "Flow Settings" menu action on each flow. You can also add new categories here.

    • Assign new flows to a category upon creation.

    • Click on a category to filter the flows list. Flows in the selected category and any sub-category will be shown.


Watch this video to see the new Flows page in action

Other changes

  1. Login changed to a two-step process, first email then password, to better support users with their own directory servers.

New modules

New modules added since the last release:

  • CSV StreamWriter - Append data to CSV files and rotate on time or number of rows.
  • IFS Observation Publisher - Send observations to IFS ERP systems.
  • Parquet Writer Module - Write data to a Parquet file.
  • SFTP Download - Download files from FTP servers to local storage.
  • SFTP Files Watcher - Check for updates on FTP servers.

Changed modules

Modules updated since the last release:

  • Array Join [2.2.1] - Improved handling of invalid messages.
  • Array to Object [2.0.4] - Handling of null values.
  • Array Split [3.0.0] - Fixed memory leak.
  • BigQuery Insert [2.0.0] - Support for decimal data types.
  • Kafka Producer [1.2.0] - Support for custom settings.
  • MariaDB Select [2.8.2] - Typos in UI.
  • MsSQL Select [1.6.3] -  Typos in UI.
  • MySQL Select [2.8.2] - Typos in UI.
  • MQTT Pub/Sub Client [6.0.0] - Fixes for high memory usage and version conflicts.
  • OPC UA Subscriber [2.3.1] - Sessions are no longer remaining after connectivity issues.
  • OPC UA Writer [3.4.0] - Added option to set SourceTimestamp
  • Oracle Database Insert [1.5.0] - Align UI with other SQL insert modules.
  • Oracle Database Select [1.5.1] - Typos in UI.
  • PostgreSQL Select [1.0.2] - Typos in UI.
  • SFTP Upload [3.1.0] - Support for setting remote directory from message.
  • TimescaleDB Select [1.0.1] - Align UI with other database modules.

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