Advanced Workflows (Visual Workflow Designer)

Description

An Advanced workflow runs on a visual canvas — the Visual Workflow Designer — where steps are nodes in a directed graph (a DAG). The lines between nodes show how data flows, and the runtime executes them in dependency order rather than top-to-bottom. Branches that don’t depend on each other run in parallel automatically.

Advanced is one of PlaidCloud’s workflow types; the others are Standard. The capabilities in this guide — the visual canvas, breakpoints, containers, Run From Here, Simulate, and the docked Inspector — are all Advanced-only. The canvas also supports real-time collaboration: several people can open the same Advanced workflow and edit it together, seeing each other’s presence and changes live.

Standard vs Advanced

Every workflow has a type, chosen when you create it:

Type	Steps are arranged in…	…and execute
Standard Serial	the Steps list	top to bottom, one at a time
Standard Parallel	the Steps list	from the list, in parallel where dependencies allow
Advanced (DAG canvas)	a visual graph of nodes and connections	in dependency order — independent branches run in parallel automatically

Standard and Advanced run on different engines: a Standard workflow executes from its Steps list, while an Advanced workflow executes from the graph you draw, following the explicit producer/consumer connections between steps. That’s why the Visual Workflow Designer opens only for Advanced workflows — arrows drawn on a Standard workflow wouldn’t change how it runs.

Note

A workflow type called Macro is on the roadmap — a reusable, callable workflow with declared inputs and outputs — and appears in the type selector as “Macro (coming soon)”.

Choose the Workflow Type

You can set the type when creating a workflow, or convert an existing Standard workflow:

• At creation — the workflow type selector offers Standard Serial, Standard Parallel, Advanced (DAG canvas), and Macro (coming soon). New workflows default to Standard Serial.
• Convert an existing workflow — select a Standard workflow in the Workflows list and choose Convert to Advanced…, then confirm. Your steps, their configuration, and their dependencies are preserved — only how the workflow is displayed and executed changes.

Note

There’s no in-app “Convert to Standard” action, so treat the switch to Advanced as a forward move. Advanced is per-workflow: a workspace can mix Standard and Advanced workflows freely, and converting one doesn’t affect the others.

The Canvas

Each step is a node, and the connections between nodes define the order steps run in. The Designer lays steps out automatically, and you can rearrange them freely.

Navigate

• Zoom in / Zoom out, Reset zoom to 100%, and Fit all nodes to view frame the workflow at any size.
• Pan tool — when active, dragging pans the canvas instead of selecting. Middle-click drag and Space+drag pan regardless of the toggle.
• Snap to grid rounds node positions to a fixed grid when you drop them, for tidy alignment.

Lay Out

• Tidy Layout (auto-arrange) re-runs the automatic left-to-right layout. It overwrites the current positions but preserves connections, notes, and highlights.
• Undo and Redo step backward and forward through layout changes (Cmd/Ctrl+Z and Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+Z), and History opens the panel of changes.

Annotate

Annotations are visual only — they document the diagram and never affect execution.

• Add Note — drop a sticky note anywhere on the canvas, then Edit Text… to write in it (or Delete Note to remove it).
• Add Highlight — draw a translucent box around a group of related steps and give it a label with Edit Label… (or Delete Highlight to remove it).
• Color — color-code a step (or reset it to Default) to group work visually.

Lock

A workflow can be locked to prevent accidental edits. Click the lock toggle to switch between Workflow editing — click to lock and Workflow is locked — click to unlock for editing. While locked, the canvas is read-only until you unlock it.

Export the Diagram

• Export layout as PNG and Export layout as PDF save a picture of the canvas for documentation, review, or sharing.

Add, Connect, and Edit Steps

Drag a step type from the palette onto the canvas. To connect steps, drag from one step to another to draw a connector — this is what tells the runtime that one step’s output feeds the next.

Caution

The workflow must stay a DAG: a connector that would create a cycle is rejected (“that connector would create a cycle”). Right-click a connector to Remove Connector or jump to Edit Source Step… / Edit Target Step… at either end.

Right-click any step for:

• Edit Step Configuration… — the step’s settings form.
• Edit Step Details… — name, memo, error handling, retry, and conditions.
• Convert Step Type… — change the step to a different operation type.
• Duplicate Step… — open the new-step form pre-populated from this step.
• Enable Step / Disable Step — a disabled step is skipped at run time.
• View Step Inputs / View Step Outputs — open the step’s data in the Inspector.
• Color — apply or clear a step color.
• Delete Step… — removes it from the workflow structure. Downstream steps that depended on its output will need to be reconfigured.

The Step Palette

The Step Palette lists every step type you can add. Use Filter… to find a step by name, and mark the ones you use most with Add to Favorites so they surface under Favorites at the top.

Run Controls

The canvas runs the whole workflow or any part of it. Because execution follows the graph, “from here” and “selected” honor dependencies rather than list position.

Action	What it runs
Run Workflow	The entire workflow from its starting steps.
Run This Step	Only the selected step.
Run From Here	The selected step and every downstream step that would normally run after it.
Run Selected	Only the selected steps — they fire in parallel and the runtime sequences them by their dependencies.
Run Section	The selected steps plus every step the graph places between the topologically earliest and latest of your selection.

While a workflow is running you can Pause (in-flight steps finish; new steps wait until you Resume), Resume a paused or stopped workflow from where it left off, or Stop (in-flight steps finish; queued steps are cancelled).

Simulate

Simulate walks the workflow’s graph without running the actual transforms. Steps paint as they would during a real run, so you can visualize the order and branches before committing to compute. Nothing executes and no data changes.

Tip

Simulate is the fastest way to sanity-check a large or heavily branched workflow — confirm the order and dependencies are what you expect, then do a real run.

Breakpoints

A breakpoint pauses a run when it reaches a step, so you can inspect upstream output before the rest of the workflow continues.

1. Right-click a step and choose Set Breakpoint (or Clear Breakpoint to remove it).
2. Run the workflow. When execution reaches a step with a breakpoint, the run pauses there; everything downstream waits.
3. Inspect the step’s inputs and outputs in the Inspector, then Resume to continue.

Breakpoints are saved with the workflow, so a breakpoint you set persists across sessions until you clear it.

Containers

A container groups related steps into a labeled box you can collapse or disable as a unit — useful for organizing large workflows or toggling a whole sub-process on and off.

• Group into Container — select the steps, then group them and give the container a name.
• Collapse Container / Expand Container — fold the container down to a single tile to declutter the canvas, or open it back up.
• Disable Container / Enable Container — disabling a container skips all of its member steps in one action. Enabling restores them.
• Rename Container… — change its label.
• Ungroup Container — remove the container; its member steps stay on the canvas.

Note

Disabling a container is the quickest way to skip an entire branch of work — for example, a block of export steps you want to leave out of a test run — without disabling each step individually.

The Inspector

The docked Step Inspector shows everything about the step you select:

• Inputs and Outputs — the data flowing into and out of the step.
• Run Stats — the step’s Last Run result, Last Duration, run count, and timing summaries including the Average and p95 durations, plus the Last Run Error or Last Run Warning when there is one.
• Edit Step Configuration… and Edit Step Details… — jump straight to the step’s forms, and rename the step inline by clicking its name.
• Rollback Step Config (Flashback) — restore the step’s configuration to an earlier saved version.
• View Run History — open this step’s full run history.

Select a single step to inspect it; select several and the Inspector points you to the bulk actions in the canvas toolbar.

Run History

Choose View this workflow’s run history to see past runs with summary statistics. The canvas also paints a heatmap from recent run records, so frequently failing or slow steps stand out at a glance.

Next Steps

• Run a workflow — running a workflow end to end
• Managing step errors — debugging failures
• Upcoming runs calendar — see when scheduled workflows will run