Suggestions for Advanced Flows

Ideas & Suggestions
1

Hi here are some suggestions to improve advanced flows

Loops and ForEach functions

  • Can we really call it advanced flows if we can’t create loops? :slight_smile:

Also the possibility to convert Std flows to Advanced Flows

Vertical flow orientation

  • Now the flows flow naturally from left to right, please add the possibility of making it flow top to bottom
    This will make us utilize the screen better. Yes, this is technically possible today, but all the flow lines
    take up so much space and makes the “workbench” messy.
    So basically switch places with the True/False exit and the Error exit of each card

flow
flow1272×978 66.7 KB

Edit: added a mockup to better illustrate the differences

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2

They deliberately disabled the ability to create infinite loops internally in the flow to stop from user (accidentally) creating loops.
There are several ways to work around this, with either apps or (re-)trigger flows, you just have to think a bit more advanced.

Probably not going to happen with this version of Homey as it would take too much of a re-write and not breaking already existing advanced flow views.

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3

Well

Its more like a cosmetic thing they need to add right ??
They just need at add connection points on the top and bottom of the cards.

Top = input
Bottom = output

no need to re-write whole thing. And that way i will not get the weird visual loops i get now the flow will look way better inbthe end

4

Not necessarily, as just changing/adding that will probably break all the current advanced flows, so it would need an entirely new “what type of (advanced) flow” selection, they could re-use lots of functions already in the current advanced flows, but it still would need considerable (re-)writing.
But Athom has done more things that aren’t really useful, just nice to have, above really necessary things they need to add, so feel free to suggest it to Athom.

5

Well all connections will stay connected the way they are i suppose

I will suggest indeed

6

Can’t see that this should be that hard to implement.

Attached a mockup how it would look like.
I would save a lot of space and it would be much easier to “read” the flow

flow
flow1272×978 66.7 KB

7

I can’t see how it would break anything? it is just changing how the flow is visualized.
just like changing the color or how the cards looks like

8

Thanks for your suggestions and response!

Right now I’m using the re-triggering version, but I would say that this is not very practical.

it is called advanced flows for a reason, shouldn’t we expect that the user is somewhat capable :slight_smile:
and that the user understands how a loop or an iteration works.

9

There are a lot of users that don’t know that 2 trigger cards won’t work on an ALL card (as example), so no, you definitely can’t expect that it will go right.
Definitely need to expect that an user is “dumb”, or find it hard to put 1+1=3 or reading the RTFM is too difficult.

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