Exporting and Importing of Workflows
To be able to have a better import feature for the end customers, a new feature to create a better help for the importer (e.g. the end customer) is developed. This feature will become handy for consultants setting up workflows locally and wanting to send them to one or more customers. It can also be used if we decide to have a web page where customers can download pre-made workflows. Some settings are always local and specific, for example the paths to folders, and can ́t be set as a general setting. Another example may be user information and passwords for e-mail servers or FTP-servers. Start creating this import guide by choosing the workflow you would like to export by selecting in your list of workflows. Then hit the Export button (disabled if no workflow is selected).
Workflow Export
To create a new import guide, choose "Edit import guide".
Create import guide
When entering the interface for the import guide, you normally would start with choosing the layout of your guide which is what the person importing this workflow will see. In the upper right corner, the red circle, is Grid and Text. Drag and drop the object you want to use into the layout area (in this case a Grid). You can use multiple pages for your layout if you like, see upper left corner where you can add pages with the + button and then move between the pages which are shown as tabs.
Import guide interface
When an object is in the layout area, you can define its place using the placement controls in the lower left corner. For a grid, you can set this up in several different ways. This is because you may want to this a little different depending on the nature of the workflow and what features this workflow holds. Select the grid and you will see some settings appear in the left bottom field. Here you decide the size, number of columns, column and row space. In the example below we have changed the default grid value to 2 x 2 which will give you a feeling of a table where you can add components in every grid.
NOTE! As you can see below, there are two grids available in the tabs. This is because there is always a surrounding grid in the layout area.
Grid value
Example of a full export and import workflow
Start by choosing the workflow you like to export. Select it in the list of workflows and hit the Export button. Choose Edit import wizard...
Create a grid and drag and drop the objects that the person who will import this workflow may need to change, e.g. objects with paths / ftp-addresses / e-mail address etc.
If you are unsure of which fields that holds this kind of information, there is a button at the far right of every single object with an i for information.
Press this button and keep the mouse button down to preview the object.
All components of your guide are also available as a tree. Choose Component tree if you prefer this way to see your objects.
When you are ready with setting up the guide, use the standard red button in the upper left of the window to close the guide. This will show the Export workflow dialog again. Choose Preview import wizard to check out what you have done. A preview of the guide will be shown.
If you are happy with your work, close the preview window and choose Export and save where to save the workflow. This workflow is now represented in an XML-file with the name of your choise.
Import a workflow
Select the workflow file you want to import, the XML-file we created in the guide. Drag and drop that XML-file on top of the Workflows list and this list will show “Drop file to import”. Drop it and your guide will be shown.
The person importing this station is now able to edit the fields you have chosen when creating the guide. When done, hit the Import-button and you are done. This guide will make it easier for the importer of a workflow. But you don ́t need to create a guide, you can just hit Export when exporting a workflow. If the importer need to change anything in the workflow, he can still do that but this time by opening the configuration of the workflow.
This is a little harder and it is easy to miss an object that needs change, that ́s why we created the option to create this guide.