3. Flow Designer

3.1. Create a flow in the flow view

You can create a Tale of Data flow in Flows by clicking Add a Flow . Existing flows will display as thumbnails .

Text search by flow name.
Flow sort by:
- Name (ascending/descending).
- Date of creation (earliest/latest).
Flow filter by group .
Flow display filter to limit the display to just:
- Flows created by the connected user.
- Flows shared by or with other users.
Switch to list or thumbnail (default) mode .

3.2. Flow Designer

Once you have created the flow, the following flow designer screen will appear:

Toolbar from which you can drag and drop sources, sinks and processors onto the canvas.
Canvas : the zone in which the flow will be designed.
Configuration zone for the nodes making up the flow (source, sink, processor).
Preview zone for the input and output data of the selected node.

Flow Designer lets you:

connect input sources with output sinks so that you can read and write data for all the tables in the catalog.
add nodes for processing data during its transfer from flow sources to sinks.
preview data throughout the flow.
start processing immediately and schedule the start.
create new flows from sinks and flow sources, and dashboards from flow sinks. In a similar way, you can add these sinks and sources to other existing flows.

3.3. Flow Designer interface

Flow Designer lets you explore and manage your flows. In it, you can also start the running of a flow. In this section we shall recapitulate all the aspects of the interface.

3.3.1. Build a flow

The Start Guide details how to set up and use tools to gradually familiarize yourself with this space.

The toolbar is made up of the items detailed in :doc: ``

3.3.1.1. Flow history

During flow design, all changes made to it will create a version of the flow that will be saved immediately.

The list of saved versions is the flow history.

You can restore any version of the flow that is stored in the history. This can be very useful if you want to take a step backwards in your work on the flow design.

To restore an archived version of the flow, click the three little dots in the top left of the toolbar and then from the drop-down menu select: Flow history.

The history window will open:

Zone for selecting the version of the flow that is to be restored .
Zone for previewing the version of the flow selected in the previous step. Hover the mouse over flow items to see the status of each node/function in this version.
Restore button. Click this to move the current version of the flow to the history and replace it with the version selected at step 1.

Note

By default, the last 30 versions of any flow will be saved to the history.

3.3.1.2. Delete

Deletes a node or link in the selected flow.

3.3.1.3. Refresh

Reloads data from source nodes.

3.3.1.4. Generating flow documentation

To make it easier to discuss, understand and track a flow, you can generate pdf documents that clearly describe the configuration of each node in the flow. To do this, just click the Documentation icon in the flow toolbar:

3.3.1.5. Importing flow nodes and functions

Certain types of processing that use various types of flow nodes may need to be re-used in other flows. By importing flow nodes you can duplicate one or more nodes from a source flow in the (current) sink flow. The source and sink flows* can be the same **flow.

To import one or more nodes into the (current) sink flow, click the Import icon on the flow toolbar:

The following selection window will open:

Zone for selecting a source flow .
Zone for selecting the nodes to be imported .
If a node in the source flow has the same name as a node in the sink flow , you must set the name the node will have in the sink flow so that you can deduplicate it.

Double-click the name of the node to display an editing zone:

Once the nodes have been selected and named, click Import to validate the import. .