Flows
Learn everything about boardme Flows.
Overview
A Flow within boardme is more than just a logical grouping of your Guides.
A Project acts as a directory for your Flows.
Your Flow, on the other hand, brings a lot of extra features along with containing your Guides.
Let's discuss some of those features below.
Display Delay
The display delay of a Flow is measured in milliseconds, and it measures the time between the flow being triggered and it being displayed.
You might want to let your users soak in the interface for a couple of seconds before onboarding them, or you prefer the user experience of the Flow being shown with a delay. In any case, this is the property where you can configure that delay.
The display delay property defaults to 500 milliseconds.
Display Frequency
For the display frequency to be activated you need to enable User tracking. That means that along with your generated boardme script, you'll need to pass an identifier for your users as well.
Display frequency has two settings:
Always Show
This is the default setting of the flow. It means the flow will be shown every single time for every user or visitor.
Once per Visitor
If your users are not authenticated, or you don't have user tracking enabled this is a good alternative if you'd like to only show the flow once.
This means that as long as the visitor is using the same browser they will not see your flow twice.
Once per User
This setting needs user tracking to be enabled, but it allows you to follow what has been shown to a single user regardless of the platform or browser they are using. For example, a user might be onboarded in a Chrome browser on a desktop device, but then they chose to use your platform from a Safari on IOS.
You'll be able to know it's the same user regardless of the device and browser difference.
Click here to read more about activating user tracking on your website.
Traversability
Flow traversability is a simple yes/no setting on the Flow.
If the flow is Traversable, it means that every consequent guide being shown has a Previous button displayed on it that allows the user to jump back to the previous guide in the Flow.
This means that with Traversability enabled the users can navigate the flow in both directions instead of just one.
Triggers
For a Flow to be shown on the user's screen you'll need to specify a trigger.
You can have flows that you're always showing, others that you are only showing on specific pages, and flows that you might want to trigger only programmatically.
Auto Trigger
The automatic trigger is the default trigger for flows, but it is far from the most useful.
If automatic triggering of a Flow is configured it means the flow is being shown on every page of your website. As the boardme script is loaded, it will try to show all the Flows that have automatic triggers configured.
While not the most useful, it is the easiest to get started with - so it is recommended that you leave the default setting when you are first installing boardme.
URL Trigger
The URL triggers are the most popular form of triggering flows within boardme.
If the URL trigger is enabled, it means that the website URL should meet certain conditions for the Flow to be triggered.
Conditions check the URL after the domain name!
https://website.com/this/is/the?url=checked
Below you can find the list of conditions that are supported:
Contains - this condition verifies if the URL contains a certain word or bit of text.
Doesn't Contain - makes sure that the URL doesn't contain the text provided.
Starts With - the URL starts with the text specified
Doesn't Start With - the URL doesn't start with the text specified
Ends With - the URL ends with the text specified
Doesn't End With - the URL doesn't end with the text specified
Equals - the URL equals 1:1 the URL specified
Doesn't Equal - the URL doesn't equal the URL specified
Matches Regex - matches the regular expression provided. This feature can be used for developing advanced checks and handling edge cases.
boardme doesn't limit you to a single condition per URL trigger. You can specify as many conditions as you like.
For example, below you can see 3 different conditions, bundled into a single one.
Starts with /projects and contains software and doesn't contain photoshop.
For chaining conditions together you can specify two different operators.
All - this makes sure all your conditions are true. It glues them together with the and keyword.
Any - at least one of the conditions specified should be true. It glues them together with the or keyword.
Manual Trigger
Manual triggers are the most advanced way of triggering boardme flows.
You can use JavaScript or plain HTML to trigger your flows.
For triggering a Flow programmatically, you need to know the identifier of the flow you are planning to trigger.
If boardme is installed into your website and you have access to the boardme API, you can simply trigger a flow by executing the following snippet of JavaScript.
If you are not familiar with JavaScript or don't have access to the JS code, you can also trigger a Flow by inserting an HTML element into the page you want to display your Flow on.
Please refer to the snippet below.
If boardme detects the HTML element and it matches the unique identifier of a published flow, it will display the Flow for the user.
Flow States
A Flow in boardme can have 3 different States. This allows you to be able to work on your onboarding while a previous version of the Flow is live on your website.
Your flow needs to be in the Published state for it to be displayed on your website!
Draft State
The Draft state is the default state for all the newly created flows.
When a flow is in the Draft state it means that it is not visible on your website even though boardme might be installed. This prevents users from seeing the Flows you are working on before you are ready to show them.
Published State
If you want to make a Flow visible for your website visitors (and you have boardme installed) all you need to do is change the Flow state to Published.
Once the Flow is published the flow is going to be live on your website.
You can Unpublish your Flow anytime to move it back to the draft state.
Edited State
Any change that you make to a Published flow, or a Guide within a published flow, will trigger the Edited state automatically.
The Edited state prevents changes to be visible instantly on your website and it allows you to Publish them when you feel like the Flow is ready to be deployed.
In case you feel like the changes are incorrect or you made some mistakes editing, you can also Discard the changes to move back to the Published state.
Recording
If you have recording enabled on your Flow, boardme will create a video of the user's interaction with your onboarding flow. You will be able to replay these recordings and make educated decisions about improving your onboarding.
boardme will provide you with the following data about each session:
Date of the session
Duration of the interaction
Number of events
Operating System of the user
Browser type of the user
Last updated