Editing Workflows: Insert Node / Remove Node / Merge Node / Calculations

Some thoughts on the implementation of extra editing options in the workflow UI.

• When changing a node in a workflow sequence it can mean deleting that node and losing all subsequent nodes, which then have to be recreated and can be quite time-consuming, especially when experimenting to find solutions. It would be great if we could click on the connecting line between nodes and were presented with the option to insert a new node. If we could also select a node (and rather than only having the 'edit' and 'delete' options), if we also had an option to 'remove' the node, snapping together the nodes before and after without having all subsequent nodes disappear.

• We can branch out from a node but it would be helpful if we could converge into a single node as well. For example if we have to split off from a node with two filters, one to check if a condition is satisfied, in which case an item attribute is edited, and another to check if the condition is not satisfied, in which case the item attribute is not edited; currently the branch that fails this check terminates the workflow, but we may still want those items to continue and merge to a subsequent node further along the branch.

• If a node could output the value held in a single attribute field of an item.

• It would also be super useful to have a range of arithmetical operators available in workflows. Arithmetical operators could be represented as node blocks rather than node circles and could contain what is effectively a spreadsheet, a grid-based interface where calculations could be performed on the incoming values and chained together.

• A table join operator that can merge items based on matching attributes and output them together.

• I would also like it if the workflow UI screen didn’t automatically re-centre itself to the middle of the workflow whenever performing an action (clicking on a node, saving an edit etc.) – with a long workflow it can become disorienting navigating back to the part of the workflow that I’m working on.

• Another possibility that could save time would be to be able to run a test cycle of a workflow, where you could select an item that belonged to the source node and tag it as the ‘test item’, then you could trigger the workflow to run on just that item in a sandbox state where any changes where temporary, just to assist troubleshooting. This way we wouldn’t need to enable a workflow and risk unintended consequences to test it. I know it is possible to take a copy of the main project and use it as a test environment, but when designing systems the rate of iteration precludes that option as each time you edited a design you would then also need to replace the version in the test environment.