If we can have the folders be sorted Alphabetically, that would be great. We all have dense Backend Workflows and current view does show them like that. Trying to get used to the new beta and like the changes and don’t want to go back for this minimal thing. Thanks!
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Feedback:
The left-hand List view is VERY hard to process due visually. The information hierarchy is way too flat and the text clipping is not necessary.
Ideas to improve the list view:
- remove the arrow next to the folders, which allows the folders to nudge left more, saving space. instead, to show which folder is open, use an icon of an OPEN FOLDER icon. You are currently using a closed folder icon to represent an open folder, which is a big wasted opportunity.
- by allowing all the folders to nudge left ~20-25 px, it allows the workflows in the folder to be more easily differentiated from the folders. Right now they appear at the same level.
- REMOVE the count of actions. This is not helpful at all and takes up a ton of space. When I am visually browsing which workflow to work on, knowing how many actions it has is of little decision value. Maybe in some rare circumstances it can help me select between one or two workflows, but generally, not at all. Or, put the number in a parenthesis next to the workflow icon. Do you realize you’re repeating the work “action” on EVERY ROW? Madness!
- Most important: allow for longer workflow name and allow it to wrap to at least 3 lines long. Not every row needs to be one row. Please please please don’t make me mouse-over to see the full name of the workflow. Allow me to create long descriptive workflow names that I can fully read in the list view without hovering over. By taking away the actions it will allow for more space. Not every row needs to be the same height. It will offer natural differentiation in the list.
- Add more margin between workflows in the list view. It’s easy to scroll down, so vertical space is not a premium. No need to clutter things or clip things so much just to save vertical space, use it and allow the list to breathe.
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Copying and pasting workflows is buggy.
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Yep, there is too much magic in the system.
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I have not attempted to use this yet, but watching the videos to get started, if the feature is not already present, it should be, which is, when a note is created on a specific action or trigger, the note itself will have a clickable link automatically embedded onto the note to quickly navigate to the workflow action or trigger. This is completely possible due to the link generated for the workflow.
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Thanks for pushing this Bubble team!
My initial thoughts:
- I like giving more real estate to an individual workflow
- The vertical layout is more intuitive. Right now there isn’t an obvious improvement over the horizontal approach but when if/else and loops are introduced this will be a lot better
- The organisation of workflows feels cramped and hard to navigate right now.
- I don’t think we need to see number of actions in a workflow in the workflows list. It just adds visual clutter and makes this list harder to read
- Equally the number of notes isn’t useful. I’d rather just see a little indicator if notes are present. And even better if notes could appear hover-style within the actions pane in google-doc style
- I could’t find how to organize by trigger type (page load, element click etc) but think this is definitely the right approach. Though I think this workflow tab then becomes a collation of all the workflows attached to any element on the page/reusable (including the page/reusable itself). But I’d like to see the ability to enter a workflow view for a specific element from the design tab in a way where I only see the workflows for that particular element.
- I love this addition for custom events
- I’m having issues with copy/pasting workflows. I can’t seem to right-click > paste as before. So I use the context menu in the header but it’s pasting an element from clipboard not the workflow I just copied (have used context menu for copy action as well)
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New major update
Icons have changed in old and new workflow editor 
I prefer these 
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In order to avoid the large blank spaces on left/right of the workflow, I would encourage Bubble to implement an horizontal visualization, as we’re all on desktop when developing.
An example I found very useful and very practical (Dataiku):
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I kinda like the new workflow editor so far, but there’s a few graphical things (clutter) that are bugging me and i’d love for it to be polished slighly as per my mock up here:
Small tweaks are as follows:
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Slightly more use of colour. Dots bigger and a corresponding dot next to the workflow title above the workflow itself.
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‘Number of actions count’ moved into the coloured dot. Concise, neater. (tbh who needs to even know how many actions there are? could be removed altogether.)
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Icons removed from left panel. Not needed!
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Notes count removed. Who really needs to know how many notes there are? it’s just taking up space & adding clutter.
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Notes icon unobtrusively placed next to the actions themselves. No digging in menu needed.
Absolutely minor changes but would make the whole thing look much neater and easier to navigate imo, especially the messy left panel.
Cheers!
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I’ve been working with the new beta workflow design this whole week and i am sorry but it’s HORRIFIC!!!
It’s extremely inefficient for advanced users like our team that manages highly complex workflows that are long and interlink deeply with BE workflows and API calls.
Its more exhausting for the eye to read top down vs left right and to find a workflow is very hard within that tiny side column list.
The UI of the workflow canvas is highly inefficient with so much white space just left unused to look “pretty”.
But the most frustrating thing is that one doesn’t get an overview of the full workflow without having to scroll or click: Before you could easily switch between different workflows and see the full workflow at one glance immediately, now one needs to first the workflow first in the tiny list, open it and then scroll to see the full workflow and hope to remember all the steps one saw at the top of the workflow before one scrolled => this kills the brain, we really want the old workflows back!
The overview was so much better and much less cognitively straining. It has been absolutely exhauuusting to use the workflows this past week and it has slowed us down significantly.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DO NOT MAKE THIS THE PERMANENT WORKFLOW DESIGN!
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I’ve been working in the new editor since it came out, and while I don’t think it’s revolutionary, it has made workflows easier to manage and find for me.
If I have one suggestion, it would be to allow multiple workflows to be edited at the same time. There’s a ton of dead space around the vertical ‘function stack’, and you could easily put two (or three on a wide monitor) next to each other.
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I’m wondering if something like a hybrid approach might work. In the following vid, I made a few changes to introduce some familiarity:
- Added WF actions to the sidebar (similar to Workflow tree in legacy editor).
- Added option to view all WFs (again, similar to legacy).
- Added a large grid view of WFs whenever a folder is selected. (Clicking a WF on the grid would also show the WF detail view.)
- Added ability to collapse folders in sidebar.
Anyway, at least it’s a bit closer to what I was hoping for.
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Yeah guys, take inspiration from real production tools. You’re not smarter than decades of iteration from industry leaders. This is Unreal Engine, you may have heard of it. Go horizontal.
Edit: I just realized how ridiculous it sounds to say “Go horizontal” when I meant to say “Stay horizontal” since it’s already that way.
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I’d totally love horizontal like n8n - makes sense for wider screen real-estate. Of course, the real gold standard is having a customiseable user preference for vertical/horizontal
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+1 for horizontal, I don’t think vertical makes much sense
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This is great imo, and very “doable” tweaks.
I was also going to suggest the “overview” mode when nothing is selected, and really nice idea to make that happen on the folder levels too. 
This version is a real nice balance between old and new. Top work. 
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Yeah, after using this a bit more and reading other comments I concur that horizontal > vertical.
I would love nothing more than a node-based workflow editor. Noodl was doing this really well. It increases the learning curve a bit but it is so much easier to manage complexity.
Also, call me crazy, but being able to write/edit a workflow’s JSON within an integrated IDE and Bubble would basically be my dream tool.
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Don’t know how feasible it is for the team to implement, but a couple things that would help optimize the vertical real estate are:
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A way to toggle the visibility of all conditional expressions on the nodes.
IMO, they’re redundant, add visual clutter, and take up valuable vertical real estate. After all, one need simply click on a node to view the expression in the property editor. -
A way to zoom just the node/detail view in or out
…even if at only two or three predetermined levels.
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Would be a “nice to have” but may go against the “spirit” of their philosophy. I do think it’s really important that they at least allow a printout of the workflow’s logic/conditions. Would be amazing to be able to copy to clipboard the entire workflow, paste it into chatGPT, and then debug it with an advanced model like o1-preview.
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I have a single-page-app on bubble. It has 239 workflows. When I switched to the new workflow editor (which I am very excited about, especially for new projects), I was very overwhelmed and think it would be impossible to find what I need to change without spending many hours categorizing existing workflows.
For legacy apps, please always allow access to the legacy workflow editor. Do not force the new one. I don’t doubt that it’s better in almost every way, however, for legacy apps that have hundreds of workflows, it will create a ton of work and slow down development.
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