The setup bar
The row of arrows across the top of your dashboard is a map of the order things happen in. It shows what you have already done, what you are in the middle of, and what the next thing is. It never stops you doing anything.
What it is, and what it is not
Setting up something that works has an order to it: connect the system you keep your data in, build a workflow, run it once to see what it does, publish it, and point something at it. Knowing that order is most of the difficulty, and until you have done it once there is nothing on a screen that tells you.
The bar is that order, written down, with your own progress marked on it. Click any stage and it opens to a sentence about where you are and a button that takes you to the page where that work happens.
It is not a wizard. It never blocks the page, it never opens a screen of its own, and you can do the stages out of order or skip them entirely. Every button on it goes to a page already in your menu, or presses a control the page already has.
And the bar charges nothing. Reading it, opening a stage and hiding it cost nothing, and nothing on it runs or spends on its own. A button that takes you to something with a price shows that price in the same place it always does, exactly as if you had found the control yourself.
Reading the marks
| Mark | What it means |
|---|---|
| A tick | Done. Something real is true — a connection exists, a workflow is saved, a call has run. |
| The lit one | Where you are: the first stage that is not done yet. There is only ever one. |
| A plain one | Not done, and not next. It is waiting for the stages before it. |
| A faded one | Nothing to do here yet, or we could not look. It keeps its number — a number that vanished would read as a stage that had gone missing — and its own sentence says which of the two it is. When it is because something did not answer, remember that it is not the same as zero: telling somebody with nine connections that they have none would be worse than saying nothing, so the stage says nothing. Reload the page. |
| A padlock | Only on the builder you can try without signing in. Those stages need an account to save into. They are shown rather than hidden, because “here is what finishing needs” is more use than a bar that pretends the job is shorter than it is. |
Every tick is worked out, not remembered
Nothing about your progress is stored anywhere. Each stage is a question asked afresh every time the page loads — do you have a connection, is a workflow saved, has anything run — and the answer is the mark you see.
That has a consequence worth knowing: delete your last connection and the Connect stage un-ticks the next time you look. Nothing has gone wrong. There is no separate record of what you have achieved that could drift away from what you actually have, which is the whole reason the bar is safe to trust.
The seven on your dashboard
| Stage | What ticks it |
|---|---|
| Account | You are signed in, so it is ticked the first time you ever see the bar. It is there to say that everything below it is free to set up. |
| Key — or Workspace | On an account with developer mode on, this is your API key and it ticks when the key exists. On every other account there is no key to get, so the stage is your workspace instead and ticks when it is ready. Same fact, told in the words your account actually lives in. |
| Connect | At least one system is connected — Dataverse, SQL, SharePoint, Blob, SFTP or any of the rest. |
| Build | At least one workflow is saved. Starting from an example and changing it counts, and is the quickest way in. |
| Run | Something has run on this account. A run you watch on the canvas is free, and it is the fastest way to see what each step produces. |
| Publish | A workflow has a live address, so something outside DocButterfly can start it. |
| Go live | Something is pointed at a workflow — a web form, a schedule or a folder being watched — so it runs without you. |
Each stage also says the number behind it, in words: how many systems are connected, how many workflows are saved, how many forms feed one.
The same bar in other places
The dashboard's is the long one. Four other screens carry a shorter bar about their own job, using the same marks. Below is every stage on each of them, and what ticks it. Wherever a stage counts something on your account, a faded mark can also mean we could not look, as described above.
Connections
The three on the Connections page, about your account as a whole:
| Stage | What ticks it |
|---|---|
| Connect a system | At least one connection is set up on your account. |
| Use it in a workflow | At least one workflow is saved. It does not check which connections that workflow uses; the builder's own Connect stage does that, one step at a time. |
| Put it to work | At least one workflow is published with a live address, so something outside DocButterfly can run it against your systems. |
If you came to Connections from setting up a FlyaDoc box, to make the connection your files will land in, the bar is shorter: Connect a system, as above, then Back to your FlyaDoc box. That second stage never ticks. It is the way back, and the box's setup picks up at the step you left.
Web forms
The three on the Web forms page:
| Stage | What ticks it |
|---|---|
| Create a form | At least one web form is live on your account. A form is published from a template in the Template Generator. |
| Give it a destination | Ticks as soon as you have a form, because a form cannot be created without somewhere to send its submissions: an email address, a workflow, or one of your connections. Its sentence says how many of your forms deliver without a workflow. Faded until there is a form. |
| Point it at a workflow | At least one form runs a workflow on every submission. A form is attached to a workflow in the builder, where you choose the form that feeds it. |
Template Generator
Six, across the numbered panels of the Template Generator, where templates and their web forms are made. They are about the template open on the page:
| Stage | What ticks it |
|---|---|
| Data | Panel 1 has something to draft from: a table picked from one of your connections, or a sample of your own JSON or XML pasted in. |
| Fields | There is at least one field to place. Press Generate template and they are worked out from your data. |
| Template | At least one field has been placed on the page. Faded until there are fields to place. |
| Save | The template is saved and nothing on the page has changed since. Change something and it un-ticks until you save again. Faded until there is a field on the page. |
| Web form | This template has a live public form that anyone with the link can fill in. Faded until the template is saved. |
| Deliver | That form sends its submissions somewhere: an email address, a workflow to run, or both. Faded until the template is saved. |
The workflow builder
The workflow builder has its own seven, about the workflow on the canvas rather than your account. On the playground, the builder you can try without signing in, Publish and Go live carry the padlock: they need an account to save into.
| Stage | What ticks it |
|---|---|
| Connect | Every step that needs a connection has one chosen. Faded while no step on the canvas needs one, unless your account has no connections at all: then it stays lit, because connecting a system is still the first real move. |
| Feed it | Something starts the workflow without you: a web form, a schedule, a folder watcher or a query intake. Faded on an empty canvas, and on the playground. |
| Build | There is at least one step and the problems list is empty. A step still waiting for you to choose where it goes does not count as a step yet. |
| Deliver | A step sends the result somewhere outside the workflow, such as a table, a library, a bucket or an email, and no step is still waiting for you to choose where it goes. Faded on an empty canvas. |
| Test | The workflow has been run on the canvas. A run you watch there is free. Change a step afterwards and it un-ticks, because that run described the workflow as it was. Faded until there is a step to run. |
| Publish | The workflow is published with a live address and the canvas has no unsaved changes. Edit it after publishing and the stage un-ticks until you save, because saving is what updates the live version. Faded until there is a step. Needs an account. |
| Go live | It is published and something is pointed at it: a web form, a schedule, a folder watcher or a query intake. Faded until there is a step. Needs an account. |
A selected step's own three
Select a step on the canvas and the bar adds three more, about that step alone. They name the settings it still needs in plain words.
| Stage | What ticks it |
|---|---|
| Configure | Every setting the step requires is filled in. A step still waiting for you to choose where it goes is not configured until you pick. |
| Wire | The step reads something the steps above it produced. Faded on the first step, which has nothing above it to read from. |
| Try it | This step has run on the canvas and finished, with or without a warning. A step that failed does not tick it, and neither does a run from before you last changed the workflow. |
The dashboard, Connections and Web forms bars read the same facts about your account, so a connection you make shows on both the dashboard's Connect and the Connections page's Connect a system. The builder and the Template Generator read what is open in front of you instead: the workflow on the canvas, or the template on the page.
Making it go away
Hide, at the right-hand end of the bar, collapses it to a single small Setup guide button. Press that button and it comes back, opened where you left it.
Each screen remembers its own choice: hiding it on the dashboard leaves the one on the Connections page alone, because “I have read the dashboard guide” and “I have read the connections guide” are different sentences.
On the dashboard, the Connections page and the Web forms page, the choice is kept on your account. Hide the bar on one computer and it stays hidden when you sign in on another computer or in a different browser. Press Setup guide in any of them and the bar comes back wherever you sign in.
The workflow builder and the Template Generator keep their bar's choice in the browser you made it in, so a different computer, a different browser or cleared browsing data brings those two back. Which stage you had open is kept the same way, in each browser.