How to start building a flow

If you're reading this, we're guessing that your business has some pretty complicated processes. They may have caused headaches for your team and you've been looking for a way to solve it all with FlowEQ.

This article is going to walk you through how to:

• Log into FlowEQ with your CRM credentials
• Install the FlowEQ Sidekick app
• Build your first flow
• Run that flow using the Sidekick app in your CRM.

Log into FlowEQ

If you haven't logged in already, sign up for a FlowEQ demo where you can tell us about the challenges you're facing, and we'll set you up with an account. For the most seamless experience, we recommend logging in using your Zendesk, Salesforce, or Freshdesk credentials. 

Log into FlowEQ here

 

Install the FlowEQ Sidekick app

Building your processes as flows is only half of the equation. You'll need a way for your team to follow these flows. For that, you'll need the FlowEQ Sidekick app.

For the best experience, we recommend installing the FlowEQ app directly in your CRM. This enables the Sidekick app's full potential because it'll be able to read and write data directly from the CRM ticket or case. 

Note: We strongly recommend installing the app on the right rail of your Case or Ticket views. You will likely need administrator access to your CRM to install the Sidekick app.

Install FlowEQ Sidekick for Zendesk

Install FlowEQ Sidekick for Salesforce

Install FlowEQ Sidekick for Freshdesk

 

Alternatively, you can also install the FlowEQ browser extension, which can run on any website without CRM automation and integration.

Install FlowEQ Sidekick extension for Chrome

Install FlowEQ Sidekick extension for Firefox

 

Once you have the Sidekick app or browser extension installed, log in using the same credentials you used in the first step.

 

Build your first flow

1. From the FlowEQ homepage, click Flow Builder

 

2. Click the Create Flow button near the top of the window

3. Give your flow a title and description

As you build more and more flows, descriptions help to keep things organized. For this reason, descriptions are mandatory. It'll be visible right underneath the flow's title in Flow Manager

 

4. Get Familiar with Flow Builder

In the Flow Builder, you'll see three main components.

• Flow Diagram
  • This will become the visual representation of the flow as you build it.

• Sidekick Preview
  • In the left rail, you'll see a more linear representation of the flow, which can follow a particular path through Decision Tree steps (more on that later) - and give an idea of what your team will see in Sidekick

• Publish Changes button
  • Your flow will be saved automatically as you build it. But it won't be available for your team to follow until you hit this button.

 

5. Build your first flow 

Click the ➕ button on the left rail.

 

Add your first steptype

Steptypes are the building blocks of flows. Each one either performs a specific task or integrates with a particular app or service. The most basic steptypes are the Decision Tree and Rich Text steptypes so we'll start there.

 

 

Configure your first steptype

The Decision Tree steptype will be the first step that your team sees when they run the flow. In this example, we'll use it for a basic troubleshooting question - what kind of device does the customer have?

 

 

Title

The text entered here will appear up top when your team sees this steptype in your flow. It's a great place to summarize exactly what you want your team to do. Since we want your team to answer a question, we'll write that question into the title field.

 

Rich Text

If you want to give your team more detailed instructions or context for the question, you can enter it here. This text will appear directly below the title

 

Decisions

Use these fields to give your team choices to decide from. For this example, the question is "Which type of device does the customer have?" so we'll create two decisions "iPhone" and "Android". 

You can have up to 10 different decisions to choose from.

 

When done, click Save.

 

Build out the first decision

Now that you've added decision branches, we need to decide what happens after your team selects an answer. Click the ➕ under iPhone to build the next step in that branch.

For this example, we'll assume that after determining the customer's device type, we'll need to check the customer's app version against the latest version in the App Store or Google Play Store. For in-depth instructions like this, we'll use the Rich Text steptype

 

Click the Rich Text steptype

 

Configure the Rich Text steptype

Title

This text will appear up top in Sidekick and so is a good place to summarize what you want your team to do. In this case, we'll use "Check the customer's app version"

 

Rich Text

Here, similar to the Decision Tree steptype, you can provide more detailed instructions. Because it's rich text we can do more than just add plain text. We want your team to check the latest app version, so add a hyperlink straight to the app's page in the App Store;

• Highlight the text
• Click the 🔗 button
• Enter the URL of the app's page then click Save
• Click Save again at the bottom of the page.

 

Build out the second decision

Since the Android step will be similar to the iPhone step, except for pointing to a new page in the Google Play Store, repeat the steps above to fill out the Android branch.

 

Publish the flow

Now that we have both decision branches built out, click the Publish Changes button, then click Confirm. Once the flow is published you'll be able to run through it in the Sidekick app.

 

Open the flow in Sidekick

Navigate into a ticket in your CRM and you will see the FlowEQ Sidekick app on the right rail. 

 

Click "My First Flow" to open the flow as your team would and you'll be presented with a question about phone types and two decisions (iPhone and Android) to choose from.

 

In this example, the customer has an iPhone, so go ahead and click the iPhone button

 

After clicking the iPhone button, the Rich Text step that you added under the iPhone branch will appear, prompting your team to check the iPhone app's version by clicking the hyperlink.

 

And with that, your first step is complete! We've just scratched the surface here, but after going through this process you can now start with building more sophisticated flows and know how to run them in your CRM.