PlentyONE Flow is the future of automation in your systems - an advanced solution providing extensive features and user-friendly interfaces, allowing you to optimise and streamline your operations and workflows through automated flows to make them more efficient.

After a successful closed beta phase, we are pleased to announce the open beta for PlentyONE Flow: Starting 4 December, PlentyONE Flow will be available in beta and early, and from 11 December in all stable systems.

Automation designed for unmatched efficiency

As of now, PlentyONE Flow already includes the functionalities previously accommodated by the event procedures and the procedure manager - and even goes beyond that. 

There will be two new user interfaces available in the “Automation” menu: Flow Studio is where you create and configure flows on a drag-and-drop interface. In the Flow Tracker, you verify the execution of these configurations and receive further information about them.

• Wide range of functionalities: The combination of the old event procedures and procedure manager provides you with greater options for automation.

• Enhanced flexibility: Whether simple or complex, Flows allow you to better map your use cases and flexibly automate work steps, combining and configuring them as required.

• Future-Ready Technology: PlentyONE Flow is designed to accommodate a growing range of actions in the future, extending beyond order management.

• Increased ease-of-use: Redesigned for user-friendliness, the new UIs seamlessly go together, streamlining daily tasks for maximum efficiency.

• Full control: With PlentyONE Flow, you always have an overview of what's happening. You have an own UI for monitoring and tracking each individual step but you can also track which changes have been made to the order in the Order UI.

Open Beta: Your chance to contribute to the development

Every piece of feedback is important to us, whether its positive acknowledgement, constructive criticism or feature requests. We still have a lot of plans for the feature and your input will help us expand and improve what we already have, but also to navigate the planning in the right direction. We therefore ask you to pay particular attention to the following points and provide feedback:

• Usability: How well can you work with the new UIs? Identify elements that function effectively and highlight areas where additional information could enhance clarity or be helpful. Determine instances where you encounter confusion or uncertainty regarding how to proceed.

• Functionality: What is essential for your specific needs? Are there missing functionalities that would enhance your productivity?  Important: Consider your workflows and use cases. Are you able to map them seamlessly?

• Performance: The more flows you create and run, the better we can analyse and scale performance. PlentyONE Flow is designed to be scalable, but without a corresponding data basis from live operation, we cannot see what needs to be improved. Stability and reliability are particularly important to us here.

Important aspects to note

• PlentyONE Flow is a new product for automation in your system. You will find familiar functions and actions, but the approach and handling are different, as we are combining event procedures, procedure managers and, in the future, also the processes in PlentyONE Flow.

• As we have initially focussed on event procedures and procedure manager, existing automations from the processes cannot yet fully be mapped. The first interactive actions are available as a proof of concept, but full integration has yet to take place. There will also be an additional flow user interface for interacting with flows in daily business.

• All existing automation functions (event procedures, procedure managers and processes) are also fully available in all systems during the open beta. PlentyONE Flow will be added additionally.

• When creating and activating flows, make sure that there are no unwanted interactions with your existing automated workflows.

• Flows must be activated to take effect. You can play around with, configure and make changes as long as a flow is not active. Only when you activate it will what you have set be carried out.

Resources, support material and assistance

The manual provides detailed explanations and descriptions of PlentyONE Flow. Additionally, you can find answers to the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) in the forum. As usual, you can reach out to our support team in the dedicated "PlentyONE Flow" category in the forum.

To help you get started with PlentyONE Flow, we have created an instructional video that guides you through the new automation feature. The video covers everything from creating and configuring flows to monitoring their execution and tracking changes:

Instructions: PlentyONE Flow - Getting started with the new feature for automation 

Outlook: Here’s what’s next for PlentyONE Flow

The next phase in PlentyONE Flow development is the integration of interactive functionalities, similar to those found in processes - this will be accompanied by a new user interface. Your feedback is crucial in shaping not only current features but also this upcoming step.

Rest assured, the existing automations (event procedures, procedure manager, and processes) will continue to be supported for a considerable period beyond the beta phase. Currently, there are no definite plans or dates for their end-of-life (EOL).