Using Designer

Designer provides you with tools to create a workflow using a visual interface. A workflow is a set of instructions and actions that includes the ordering, timing and decisions needed to achieve a specific goal. Create a workflow using a visual programming approach by constructing a logic tree diagram.

Before making any changes to an existing, active workflow design, always disable the workflow first. This prevents the loss of your changes if the changes render the workflow design to be invalid.

Accessing the Designer page

To access the Designer interface:

Select Workflows from the main menu, and select Manage workflows from the navigation panel.
Select a relevant workflow name and then click the Versions tab.
Hover over the existing workflow version to reveal an action menu on the right side of the table.
Click on the action menu and select Edit to edit the the workflow logic.

Understanding the Designer interface

The interface contains five main elements.

Tabs: Switch between the Designer and NEAL tabs to refine your workflow. The system prompts you to save your changes every time you switch to the other tab. Refer to the NEAL documentation for more information about NEAL scripting capabilities.
Canvas: Use the canvas space to connect thinklets and flow controls into a logic tree diagram. Drag-and-drop elements from the toolbar onto the existing code blocks. Each workflow begins with a Start block and ends with the End state. Since you can have multiple branches in your workflow, you may end up with multiple End states.
Toolbar: Use the toolbar to define the building blocks of your workflow by adding and configuring thinklets, flow controls, and connectors. Similarly, define workflow parameters and details.
Workflow map: Zoom in and out, and frame the entire workflow using the workflow map controls.
Save workflow or Close: Click the Save workflow button to commit the changes, or Close the Designer space without saving the changes.

Adding and removing thinklets

From the workflow Designer tab, open the Toolbox right-side to start adding Thinklets and Flow controls to the canvas:

Drag elements and then drop them onto the workflow canvas. Once you move an element over the canvas, a parking space appears. Touch the parking space with the thinklet and drop to confirm.
To remove an element from the canvas, click on the trash icon.

Dropping a thinklet anywhere outside of the design, cancels the action and leaves the design unaltered.

Once you add an element from the toolbar, click on it to reveal its properties.

You can also leverage the Designer tab for advanced workflow design:

Adding thinklets to an existing path

To add thinklets to your workflow:

Drag the thinklet from the Toolbox to the existing connection path. If the thinklet is in the correct position, a horizontal line appears, indicating that you can add the thinklet.
Drop the thinklet onto the connection path.

Connecting thinklets to other workflow branches

It may be necessary to skip certain steps in a workflow and then rejoin the flow later. For example, if a condition to check whether the software installed on a device is already in the workflow. In this case, you may want to skip the steps of installing the software and continue with the rest of the configuration.

Hover over the last thinklet or flow control in a path that has no connection. A pulsing dot appears at the bottom of the thinklet.
Click and drag from the dot to draw a line. Dots appear on the top of all thinklets and flow controls that are valid targets for connection.
Attach the dotted line to the relevant thinklet or flow control by attaching the dotted line to the pulsing dot on the thinklet.

When a thinklet or flow control has more than one path leading to it, you can remove one of the connection paths. To delete a path:

Click on the relevant connection path, and the line appears in bold.
Press Backspace/Delete.

The method of connecting branches and deleting unwanted paths can also be used to switch large sections of workflows between condition branches.

Configuring workflow thinklets, flow controls and connectors

From the workflow Designer tab, open the Toolbox right-side panel to:

Configure Thinklets to execute remote actions, launch campaigns, integrate with Service/APIs, or directly communicate with employees via the Nexthink channel in Microsoft Teams.
Set up Flow controls to drive workflow progression and decision logic based on values collected by the workflow or Nexthink data.
Configure Connectors to quickly set up integration events to third-party APIs.
- Nexthink supports the configuration of Connectors with the following third-party applications: Microsoft Entra ID, Microsoft Outlook, ChatGPT and ServiceNow.

You can select manual custom fields—user or device attributes—as parameter values in thinklets to use environment-specific data as input.

Similarly, you can use these manual custom fields in the Condition flow-control thinklet to make decisions based on user or device-specific attributes.

Defining Workflow parameters

Define workflow parameters to set values at the beginning of the workflow execution to parametrize the actions that will be executed.

Refer to the Parameters and dynamic values documentation for more information on how to use and configure parameters.

Defining Workflow details

Use the Workflow details section of the toolbar to add a description to the workflow. Describe the intent of the workflow design and any additional information that other users should be aware of when reviewing and editing it.

Reviewing workflow design issues

The system displays any problems with the workflow design that prevent it from being valid and activated, in the error section of the toolbar when you click Save workflow.

Review the list and correct any of the issues identified to ensure you have a valid workflow design.

The list of validation issues might reveal additional problems once current issues are resolved, as some issues may prevent the validation of other design elements.

Validation messages are not available in the NEAL editor.