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The Live Flow View

The Live view puts a flow's work on the flow itself. It draws the flow as a diagram and shows, on every bit, how many open trails are sitting there right now, which of them are stuck, and who is running them. Switch to Trends and the same diagram shows where work went over the last hour, day, week or month, and where it dropped off. It is built for the person responsible for a flow: it answers "where is the work, and what needs attention?" without paging through trails one by one.

The same page has a third view, Structure, which draws the flow as it is saved, with no work on it. Structure is open to everyone who can view the flow; Now and Trends, which show the work on it, need the Edit permission level.

The Live view is read-only. It never changes the flow and never acts on a trail; when you want to act, it takes you to the trail itself.

Opening the Live view​

Open the menu on a flow's card and choose Diagram. The page opens full screen, with a way back to where you came from. Which view you land on depends on your permission level on the organization or group the flow belongs to:

  • With Edit or Admin, you land on the Now view, and the switch at the top offers Now, Trends and Structure.
  • With View or Engage, you land on the Structure view, and it is the only view you have: the page shows the flow's shape but never its work. A link to the page that a colleague shares with you opens Structure as well, whichever view the link names.

From a flow's edit page, the Structure button opens the same page on the Structure view; with Edit or Admin you can switch to Now or Trends from there.

If your access is withdrawn or the flow is deleted while you have the page open, the view stops and clears what it was showing rather than leaving an old picture on screen. If you keep View but lose Edit, the page falls back to Structure. See Inviting users, roles and permissions for the permission levels.

The page's address keeps what you are looking at, such as the view, the lens and the filter, so a link you share opens the same picture for a colleague who has the same access.

Reading the diagram​

Each bit of the flow is drawn as a node, connected as the flow is connected. In the Now view a bit is sized and lit by the open trails on it: the busier the bit, the larger and brighter it is, measured against the busiest bit currently shown, so a quiet flow and a busy flow both use the full range. A bit with nothing to show fades to an outline. A legend at the bottom of the canvas always says what the light and the size mean.

Floxar flows have no stages of their own, so the Live view groups a large flow into automatic sections by following its narrow points, numbered in reading order and named after the bit each one starts from. Bits where the flow ends are gathered into an Outcomes group. Trails can wait on an end bit, because reaching the last step does not close a trail; those bits carry counts like any other. Bits that still hold trails but are no longer connected into the flow, for example because they were archived, appear in a separate No longer in the flow group so that no open trail goes missing.

What a bit shows depends on how far you zoom:

  • Zoomed far out, each bit is a bubble of light with its count inside once there is room, and section names are drawn large.
  • Zooming in, the bubble becomes a small pill with the count, then the count with the bit's title.
  • Close up, each bit is a full card: its title, the count, a stuck or still-learning mark, a bar showing the trails by status, the oldest and typical time on the bit, and the share run by agents.

Hovering on a bit lights its neighbours. When you select a bit, Trace paths keeps everything upstream and downstream of it and fades the rest, and Fit section fits its section to the screen. An overview map of the whole flow helps you find your way on a large screen.

The switch at the top moves between two views of the same diagram. They come from different sources and are never mixed on one screen, because for a few minutes at a time their numbers can differ.

  • Now shows where open trails are at this moment: the trails on each bit, how long they have been there, how many are stuck, their status and priority, and whether people or agents hold them. It refreshes about every half-minute while the page is visible, and you can refresh it yourself at any time. The top of the page says how long ago it was updated. After a refresh, the trails that moved are drawn as sparks along the connection they took, coloured by whether a person or an agent moved them, and a small badge on a bit shows how its count changed.
  • Trends shows what happened over a window you choose: the last hour, 24 hours, 7 days or 30 days, with 24 hours to start with. Each bit shows how many trails arrived, how many left, and how many dropped off there; connections are drawn thicker where more trails moved along them. Trends is refreshed every few minutes, and the top of the page shows the time its figures are complete up to as "Data as of".

Drop-off at a bit counts the trails that were abandoned there, plus the trails that were completed there although the bit is not an end of the flow. If a trail is reopened, its earlier drop-off is taken back.

Selecting a bit in Trends shows the window's figures for it, and offers to switch to Now to see the trails on that bit today.

The Structure view​

Structure shows the flow itself, with no work on it: every bit, the connections between them, and on each connection the option a person or agent chooses to take it. Nothing is sized or lit, nothing moves, and there is no count to refresh; the picture changes only when the flow is edited, and the page picks that up within a few minutes. It is open to everyone who can view the flow, so it is also how you look at a flow's shape when you cannot see its work.

What a bit shows depends on how far you zoom, as in the other views:

  • Zoomed far out, each bit is a bubble marked with its kind: where the flow starts, where it branches into a decision, and where it ends. A plain step carries no mark.
  • Zooming in, the bubble becomes a pill with the bit's title, then a card with its title, its kind and how many options lead out of it.
  • Close up, the card lists the options by their labels — an option without a label shows the bit it leads to — and summarises what the bit asks for, such as two text areas and a dropdown. The labels also appear on the connections themselves once you are close enough to read them.

The panel on the left is an index of the flow: its sections in reading order, each with the bits it holds and how many options each one offers. Selecting a bit there takes the diagram to it; selecting a section's heading fits the section to the screen.

Selecting a bit opens its preview on the right: its summary, the elements it asks for, its Options with the bits they lead to, and the bits it is Reached from. Each of those is a link to the next bit, so you can walk the flow from the preview alone. Open bit takes you to the bit itself: to the editor when you can edit the flow, and to the bit's read-only page otherwise.

Search finds bits by title. Trace paths, Fit section, the themes and your own arrangement of the diagram work as they do in the Now view, and the arrangement you make in one is the arrangement you see in the other. There is no filter, no ranked list, no tour and no Lite switch, because there is no work to filter or to animate.

On a phone, Structure shows the index and the bit preview; the diagram opens on a larger screen.

Lenses: what the light means​

A lens decides what the diagram's light emphasises. Changing the lens never changes a number; it changes which bits stand out and how the ranked list on the left is ordered.

In Now there are four lenses:

  • Workload lights bits by how many trails are on them.
  • Who colours bits from people to agents, by the share of the trails held by agents.
  • Waiting colours bits by how long their trails have been waiting, from over the typical time to stuck.
  • Priority lights bits by their critical and high priority trails.

In Trends there are two: Throughput, by the trails that arrived at each bit, and Drop-off, by the trails that dropped off there.

Colour is never the only signal. Stuck bits also carry a written mark, agents are named and marked with their own symbol, and a still-learning bit is drawn with a dashed edge and a label.

Stuck and still learning​

The Live view learns how long trails normally stay on each bit, from the trails that moved on from it in this flow over the last 30 days. The middle of those times is the bit's typical time. You do not set anything; every bit learns on its own.

A trail is stuck when it has been on its bit far longer than usual: more than three times the typical time, longer than nearly every trail that passed through in the last 30 days, and at least a quarter of an hour. Requiring all three keeps the alarm meaningful on bits where some long stays are normal. Time on a bit counts from the moment the trail arrived, and paused time counts too, because the view measures how long work has been sitting, not how long someone worked on it.

A bit is still learning until enough trails have moved on from it in the last 30 days to know what normal looks like. Until then it flags nothing as stuck and says so. Once people and agents have each passed through a bit often enough, each gets a typical time of its own, and every trail is judged against the one for whoever holds it. When you open a single bit, its stuck count shows how long a trail must wait there to count as stuck, separately for people and agents when their times differ.

Filtering to the work you care about​

The filter bar narrows the whole page to the trails you care about: the counts on the bits, the light, the ranked list, the details panel and the sparks all follow it. The bar always states the result, such as "37 of 3,014 trails", with a way to clear it, and each bit shows its matching trails out of its total.

  • Presets are one-click starting points: All work, Stuck, Critical and high, Run by agents, In the queue, and Waiting over a day.
  • Filter menus narrow by status, priority, run by (people or agents), assignee, how long trails have been waiting, and categories. Every option shows how many trails it would leave before you choose it. Choices in different menus combine, so "Critical" and "Stuck" together means trails that are both.
  • Only bits with work hides every bit with nothing to show and draws the rest closer together, so a large flow becomes the handful of bits that answer your question, at a size where you can read their names. A dotted line marked with a number joins two shown bits across the hidden bits between them. The numbers do not change; only the picture does.
  • Search finds bits by title, the people and agents holding trails in the flow, and trails by name. Choosing a bit takes you to it; choosing a person or agent filters to their trails; choosing the trail-name option filters by name.

You can also filter from what is on screen: a tile on the left applies its preset, and selecting an assignee in the details panel filters to that person or agent.

In Trends, only the run-by and category filters apply, because Trends records where trails went rather than their present status or owner. The bar says how many of your filters apply to Now only, and switching back to Now restores them.

The ranked list and the details panel​

The panel on the left starts with summary tiles. In Now they show the open trails (or the matching ones), the stuck trails and how many bits they sit on, the share run by agents, and the critical and high priority trails. In Trends they show the trails started in the window and the trails that dropped off. Below the tiles, the bits are ranked by the active lens, with stuck bits first where it matters. Selecting a bit in the list takes the diagram to it. You can hide the panel to give the diagram more room.

Selecting a bit, on the diagram or in the list, opens its details on the right. In Now you see how many trails are there, how many are stuck and what stuck means on that bit, its typical time and its oldest trail, and how the trails split between people, agents and the queue. Below that are the trails themselves, longest on the bit first, each with its name, who holds it, how long it has been there, its status and its priority. Open takes you to that trail at its current step, where you can work on it as usual. To look at several bits together, Shift-click them or Shift-drag a box around them: the panel adds up their trails and names the bit each trail is on.

People, agents and the queue​

Every open trail on the diagram is in exactly one of three groups: run by a person, run by an agent, or waiting in the queue for someone to claim it. The share run by agents is counted over assigned trails only, so the queue never inflates or hides it. You see the agent share on each bit, across the whole flow on the left, and as a split bar in the details panel, where agents are marked by name and symbol. To see only the queue, use the In the queue preset or the status filter.

Arranging and collapsing​

You can drag bits to arrange the diagram the way you think about the flow. Your arrangement is saved for you on that device, and bits added to the flow later find their own place. Reset my arrangement brings back the automatic layout. Arranging works in the full picture of the Now view; while only bits with work are shown, or in Trends, a dragged bit returns to its place.

In Now, each automatic section can be collapsed into a single summary node that keeps the section's totals, such as its trails, stuck trails and status mix. A strip at the top of the diagram says how many sections are collapsed and offers to expand them all.

Lite, themes, the tour and shortcuts​

Lite turns off everything that costs your computer effort without adding information: the sparks and moving streams, the glow and the drifting light behind the bits, and the animated transitions. Trends then shows its moves as still bands. Lite starts on for large flows, and whenever your device asks for reduced motion; your own choice is remembered on that device. Reduced motion keeps movement off even with Lite turned off.

The diagram comes in two themes, Aurora, where work glows as light, and Ink, Floxar's paper-and-ink look. Both follow your light or dark appearance setting, and your choice is remembered on that device. A theme changes only how the diagram looks, never what it shows.

Tour visits the top bits of the active lens one after another, opening each one's details for a few seconds; any key or click stops it. It suits a wall display or a first look at an unfamiliar flow.

The Live view has keyboard shortcuts for search, switching views, fitting the flow, showing only bits with work and choosing a lens. The help next to the lens choice lists them, along with tips on selecting and arranging bits and what Lite turns off. Every bit can be reached with the keyboard, and screen readers announce its title, its open trails and its stuck trails.

On phones and tablets​

On a phone, the Live view shows the search, the filters, the summary tiles and the ranked list of bits with the same figures, and notes that the diagram opens on a larger screen. Selecting a bit opens its details as a full-height panel. On a tablet you get the diagram with a narrower ranked list and no overview map, and a bit's details open from the bottom of the screen.

For agents​

The same picture is available over MCP to AI clients and agents that hold the Edit permission level on the flow: the tool get_flow_live_view returns the Now view's figures for each bit, ranked and filtered the same way, and the trails on a bit can then be listed with the trail filters. Trends is available on the page only.

The Structure view's facts are available to every agent that can view the flow, through get_flow_structure: each connection carries the label of the option that takes it, and each bit says how many elements of each type it asks for, so an agent reads a flow's choices and what each step collects without reading the bits' full content. See the reading tools reference for the details.

Last reviewed: 2026-10-08

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