How to structure your flows

Thank you for sharing your work. Could you post a screenshot from the flow.homey.app web gui with expanded folders please? This would be very helpful for me to understand your approach, rebuild my structure and clean up my mess :blush:

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Thank you :+1: :grinning:

How to structure flows: Add comments to your flows
Splitting up flows can also be confusing sometimes.
For better understand and for refernece you can add comment to a flow.

I created an app that allows you to add comment.
Find the app description here
And the app here

image

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Great work! Thanks…a lot of your flows are in dutch, it would be great all the text was also in dutch:-) Very interesting!

Great work. Structuring helps in understanding. Actually this inspired me to do it slightly different and use icons in all my flows. This gives me a much quicker insight than using special characters.
My flows now tell me what they are about (first icon) and what type they are (second icon).
I use (2nd icon) lightning for a trigger, rolling ball for a flow, clock for a timed flow etc.

Hope this helps too!

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How do you use icons?

You can simply use emoticons, just like you do anywhere else.
Not only in flows, but in the naming of devices, logic, etc too, by the way…

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In reply to both: on my Android Phone keyboard I can insert icons from the smiley set. When you have a couple of icons inserted you can use copy/paste them in the web version as well

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If you use Microsoft Windows you can press the Windows-Key and . (dot), this will show you the Emoji Interface. Happy emojing :grin::wink::+1:t3:

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@FKey

After messing around for a few months, just to get familiar with Homey and its possibilities, I just reset my Homey for a fresh start. I added all of my Zigbee devices in a more logical order etc. etc…

There’s only one thing I just don’t get to get logical and that’s flows. If I do it your way and I add flows per zone, and I call a flow “Light on/off”, I would have multiple flows called the same, for each zone one of that flow. And if I want to start that flow from another flow, I can’t keep them apart. Because if you want to search for the flow “Light on/off” I get multiple results, but the zone isn’t mentioned. So I end up naming my flows like “Light on/off - Bedroom 1” and “Light on/off - Kitchen”.

Long story short. Any ideas who to get around that?

Btw.: In the Homey community store, there’s an app called H.O.O.P… This app also helps allot to prevent the use repetitive flows.

Use the room in the name of the flow. “lights bedroom on/off” or “lights kitchen on/off”

It’s not difficult but you have to be a bit creativ

@Jan_Willem_Visser

Thank you, Jan Willem. That is what I have been doing, but I wondered if I wasn’t missing something which would allow to search in flows using the zones.

I do recognize that issue.
See also How to structure your flows: using virtual devices above
I solved it by creating virtual buttons. Instead of starting the flow with a flowcard “when this flow is started” I start the flows with “when this button is pressed.”
(Be aware to create virtual buttons not switches!)

This also brings a second advantage: for virual button you can see in which flow this button is used.
For flow you can ot see fro which flows they are called.

Several virtual buttons
image

Start the flow with this button
(In this case just 1)
image

The buttons show the flows they are used in
image

Thank you guys for the tutorial, and all the comments. I’m still scratching my head when it comes to the “else” statement. I’m using it in 1 flow and it works as expected (turning off in 2 cases) see …

I’m actually perplexed but I believe I don’t quite understand the potential of the “else” and how it relates to the “Trigger” and “AND”… maybe someone can explain it w/ a simple metaphor.
Thanks

Short and simple (hopefully):
The action card/s below ELSE is/are triggered if the condition in the AND section is not true.

So your flow makes no sense. The heater will be in any case switched off, no matter if the heater was on or off when the bathroom became active.

okay, the explanation makes sense to me !
The reason for this flow was that I needed one that acts

  • once the window is open and you switch on the heater
  • once you open the window while the heater is already on

it seems to work with this flow, before it didn’t work the way I wanted it

Then it happens what?
In this case the trigger is „switch on the heater“ not „If zone becomes active“. So this flow will not be triggered.

Before means what?
You can delete the „Turn off“ below the ELSE.

Before I added the “else” it didn’t turn off when the heater was already running and I opened the window. It only turned off the heater if the heater was off (and I turned it on) and the window open.
I can’t verify this before Tuesday though.

you were right.

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