New Workflow tab - Discussion Megathread

fede.bubble · October 3, 2024, 2:30pm

During BubbleCon 2024 the team announced and demoed new workflow designs and features.

Please add all your thoughts, comments, screenshots and feedback in this discussion thread to make it easier for the team to ingest and review.

Thanks!

PS: I will merge some of the existing comments into this discussion thread as I find them

Wallacekaranja · October 2, 2024, 7:49pm

Hey Bubblers,

I’ve been exploring the new workflow design in Bubble, and I’d love to hear your thoughts! It’s cleaner and more intuitive, but I’m curious—does it actually improve your workflow speed?

UI changes : Smoother look, but is it more efficient for you?
Action visibility : Do you like the improved layout, or miss the old one?
Learning curve : Easy to adapt, or are there some challenges?

How’s the switch for you so far? Let’s chat below!

rico.trevisan · October 3, 2024, 2:09pm

@fede.bubble maybe a thread like this should be under the announcements?

Thoughts and feedback:

I would prefer that the folders are all collapsed when I first open it. Specially the uncategorized.
Lose the number of actions, it’s too much noise on the initial list.
Lose the flow at the end of each workflow’s name
If there’s a schedule API or custom event on the workflow, split the window, let me see that flow side by side
let me drag / drop the workflows inside a folder to reorder them.

luke2 · October 3, 2024, 2:18pm

I’m still gathering some thoughts and testing it, but I’m going to be honest, overall I’m not vibing it at the moment. Quite clunky and cumbersome, I feel like its more ‘alpha’ than ‘beta’.

Comparing to some of the screens on bubble con, missing features like workflow events grouped by type would be super useful to find things in large sets of wf’s. Maybe I’m still adjusting, but there is some really low hanging fruit where things can be improved and as others have spotted, some bugs that need addressing.

100% agree with @rico.trevisan, this needs its dedicated thread and can also serve as an on-going place for improvements, issues and whats to come in this space…

rico.trevisan · October 3, 2024, 2:24pm

Let me create a folder from this menu:

jos2 · October 3, 2024, 8:54am

What a great update to the workflow editor! I created different folders to better organize my workflows. However, a workflow can only belong to one folder, and I have many workflows that are part of multiple scenarios (folders), especially in the backend workflows. Will there be an option to label workflows so I can create scenarios and add the relevant workflows to each one? This gives a better overview of the flow of an senario.

i don’t see how i can use these folders for every senario? now i created the folders:

API event - public
API event - private
database trigger
custom event
bulk scripts

rico.trevisan · October 3, 2024, 2:38pm

Clicking on Go to API takes you to the Backend workflows page but it sets the active tab to the design tab which doesn’t exist in the backend workflow.

nico.dicagno · October 3, 2024, 3:02pm

Please let us revert back to the old system even though we don’t have admin rights of the editor! Seems like an oversight that could be patched quite quickly.

I might need to contact a client just to make them uncheck the advanced feature, which is not ideal. And without being able to switch back and forth i’d probably simply end up not using it on client apps.

juanpablo9717 · October 3, 2024, 3:07pm

Hey guys, I’ve been exploring the new Workflows design, but I still can’t find the way to create “branches” in the conditions. Does anyone know if this has not been released yet or how I can make the conditions this way?

nsykes · October 3, 2024, 3:10pm

This has not been released – this was a ‘looking forward’ statement that was more “now that we’ve cleaned up the UX, it lays the groundwork to do stuff like this”

partnerupagency · October 3, 2024, 4:21pm

Hello, its posible to turn off the beta testing and back to the normal version? im not ready yet to change at the new UI. Help!

nico.dicagno · October 3, 2024, 4:59pm

This will work - but only if you have admin collaborator rights on the app’s editor.

giosegar · October 3, 2024, 5:44pm

It’s more intuitive but it’s not going to change much about workflows in Bubble until their conditional branching, looping, and parallel processing options come out IMO.

I know there are ways to loop with Bubble, but none of them are performant. Whenever I need to create a list of things I still use n8n to do it.

jonathan.lefebvre · October 3, 2024, 6:08pm

This is really great I hope to see the loops soon, mostly for front-end processing. There are 2 main elements missing that would be really critical to see in order to better design workflows ;

Identify Client-Side vs Server-Side actions : Really important to easily know & see badly optimized workflow for WU consumption. It could simply be an icon or a color. Intensely usefull for plugins actions.
Identify Sync vs Async actions : Simply an Icon, or text or color to show Async when an action is performed async because when building complexe workflows it’s often raging when we forgot animation/state edition/other cause problem with conditions (or for new users so they understand more easily there are something different there so maybe it’s the reason it doesn’t work as intended)

jonathan.buckland · October 1, 2024, 10:22pm

Does anyone know if the new workflow editor now runs each step synchronously? Seams a bit weird if it is asynchronous if they name them STEP 1 etc.

adamhholmes · October 1, 2024, 10:26pm

I haven’t looked at it in too much detail… but I would assume there’s no change in how workflow steps run… this is just a change in the editor as far as I can tell.

georgecollier · October 1, 2024, 10:33pm

This is correct

rpetribu · October 1, 2024, 10:52pm

which is super strange… we have to agree…

the new design of the workflow tab and the future updates with loops, conditionals, etc. lead us to believe that the steps will be respected. Making the workflows run synchronously is crucial to ensure accuracy in the processes that are being triggered.

New users will continue to think that their flows are broken or that the platform is presenting some bug.

They could even make an option, like the javascript plugin itself has, to mark whether we want the action to run synchronously or not. There would be no problem. But it should be a user’s premise.

mghatiya · October 2, 2024, 6:10am

Since long back people have been talking of how counter intuitive the “steps” in workflows are. I even had an ideaboard item for this.

Finally they work on all that and retain that confusion.