How to start a new flow at the end of another

Just like your business processes, flows work best when they are focussed. A sprawling flow can cause more confusion than it saves and can also get unwieldy pretty quick. 

We recommend building flows that are particularly great for a particular purpose. You can build these flows out in modules and navigate back and forth between them, rather than having one giant flow to rule them all. 

When it comes to moving between flows, you have two options:

1. If you want to branch off into a new flow and then return back to your original one, stop reading here and check out Boomerang steptypes instead.

2. If you want to begin a new flow after completing another, use the Launch New Flow steptypes.

All Types

There are three types of Launch New Flow steptypes: Single, Selected, and Dynamic. However, they can all:

• only be used as the final step in the flow
• have a title that will appear up top in Sidekick when your team reaches this step. We recommend using this title to explain the transition from one flow into another.
• be sped up by checking the Automatically launch new flow checkbox, which will immediately take your team to the new flow when they reach this step

Single

Use the Launch New Flow: Single steptype, when you know exactly which flow your team needs next. 

Select a new flow to launch

Use this field to select the new flow you want to launch. You can only select one and your team will not be given the chance to choose another.

If you want to give your team a choice of which flow to boomerang into, you'll want to use a Selected or Dynamic boomerang.

(Optional) Select step to launch into

If you want your team to skip certain steps and start at a particular step in your flow, you can use the window provided to select that step. The selected step will turn yellow. Once your team reaches the Launch New Flow: Single step in your flow, they will be taken directly to the yellow step you selected. Please note that this feature is optional and your team can still start at the beginning of the flow by default.

Note: This option is not available in Selected or Dynamic Launch New Flow steptypes (see below). However, you can combine a Decision steptype before multiple Launch New Flow: Single steptypes to achieve the same effect.

Selected

Use the Launch New Flow: Selected steptype, when you want to give your team a choice of which flow to move into next. The different options you select will be presented as buttons in Sidekick for your team to click. 

Rich Text Field

Use the large text field to give your team any extra information they may need to select the right next flow.

Flow to Launch

Select flow options for your team to choose from.

Label (Optional: Default is title)

Enter a shorthand name or label for each flow option. If nothing is entered here, the title of the flow will be used instead. If your flows tend to have longer names, we recommend giving them a shorter label because of the limited size available in Sidekick.

Dynamic

Use a Launch New Flow: Dynamic steptype to send your team to different flows based on criteria that you define. This is handy if you have a field in your CRM that you can use to automate the decision on which flow to launch into.

For each flow to choose from, you'll need to add a new criteria line for each.

Order

Use this field to decide the order of the flows to move into.

Match Template

Use this field to pull in the field that contains the information you want to run a condition against. Use the ➕ button to select a field in any of your systems connected to FlowEQ.

Criteria

Select Equals or Contains from the dropdown. Equals require an exact match, case included. Contains does not require an exact match and is not case sensitive.

Value

Enter the value that should equal or be contained within the Match Template. You can hard code a value here, or again use the ➕ button to pull in a detail from your FlowEQ-connected systems.

Launched Flow

When your Match Template equals or contains your Value, use this dropdown to select which flow your team should be moved into.

Example

• Let's say your team has two different products: Hoverboard and E-Bike.
• You already have two flows that create return shipping labels for these two products:
  • Create Hoverboard Shipping Label
  • Create E-Bike Shipping Label
• Your CRM has a ticket field called Product Name
• You want to automatically send your team to the right flow to create the right shipping label based on which product is shown in the Product Name field.

In this case, you would configure two different Criteria Rows for each of the different products:

1st Criteria Row

• Match Template = Select the Product Name field
• Criteria = Equals
• Value = Hoverboard
• Launched Flow = Create Hoverboard Shipping Label

2nd Criteria Row

• Match Template = Select the Product Name field
• Criteria = Equals
• Value = E-Bike
• Launched Flow = Create E-Bike Shipping Label

When configured like this, if the Product Name field contains "Hoverboard", the flow will automatically send your team into the Create Hoverboard Shipping Label flow. If the field says "E-Bike", it will send your team into the Create E-Bike Shipping Label flow instead.