Best Practices for Creating Desktop Workflows

Desktop workflows can meet a broad range of needs, some simple and some complex. Complex workflows can be challenging to manage, but keeping your flow diagram elements grouped intuitively on your canvas can help make it easier to understand, in case the workflow needs to be revised later.

The following practices can also be helpful when creating and updating workflows.

• Apply logic prudently—Desktop workflows contain many points where logic may be used, such as script elements, workspace elements, decision elements, and connectors. The best places to incorporate logic will depend on your use case, but be sure to consider the full impact and scalability of the workflow when adding these functions. Creating logic that is simple and distinct with minimal overlap is much easier to maintain and modify over time.

• Track and advance your flows—Record updates made by workflows are tracked in record audit logs, but sometimes tracking the path a record has taken through a complex flow can be challenging. To make this easier, you can add a custom field to manage the workflow “state.” For example, if an agent completes a key step in a workflow, consider running a rule action to update an easily reviewed custom field signifying that the step was completed. With this information tracked by a field, you could even check its value in an initial decision point to bypass steps completed in previous edits of the record.

For more best practices for using the various features that comprise the dynamic agent desktop, see Overview of the Dynamic Agent Desktop.