Designing Workflows People Actually Use
What we learned from watching 40 customers build their first workflow in Northwind Flow.
This summer our product team watched 40 customers build their first workflow from scratch. The results changed our roadmap for Flow 4.2.
Start from the outcome
Most people did not think in triggers and actions. They thought in outcomes: "the invoice is approved" or "the new hire has a laptop". We now let users start from a goal and suggest the steps.
The second lesson: people abandon workflows that need more than seven steps to set up. Templates now cover the most common cases with three to five steps.
Finally, every workflow needs an owner. Workflows without a named owner were three times more likely to be switched off within a month.