Running a Flow from a URL

Last Updated: 08/12/2016 Introduced in Verision: 2.0

It is possible to run a flow just by accessing its URL. The URL can be copied to the clipboard and emailed to a user, or bookmarked, for example. The URL can be lengthy, and one way to make it more user-friendly is to create an alias.

An alias is a short name for a flow that can replace a FlowID, a long, complicated string generated by the system to identify the flow. To run the flow outside the portal, you can append a flow’s alias to the portal’s URL in a browser’s address bar.

To create an alias for a flow, select the flow’s thumbnail and select Edit > Create Alias from its Action menu. Flows with aliases can be run with the URL, http://www.yourdomain.com/decisions/flows/[YourFlowAlias.]

When you access a flow via its URL (alias or not), the Portal will prompt for a login unless the flow is running under the Guest account. However, the full Portal will not load; only the flow itself.

Example

We begin our example with the assumption that our system contains a flow called Insurance Request Flow that enables an insurance request to be submitted and processed. Our example alias will make it possible to operate this flow through a more convenient URL than the system default.

Go to the Designer Folder for the flow to be run via an alias. To see the FlowID that the alias will replace, first click the flow’s thumbnail and select Run [Advanced] > Run Flow in New Window from its Action menu.

The flow runs, and the FlowID displays in the URL after “FlowID=”.

To create an alias, select the flow’s thumbnail, then select Edit > Create URL Alias from its Action menu.

Enter the name “Insurance_Request” (without spaces) and click OK.

To test our alias, type the URL replacing the FlowID with the alias. We’ll enter http://localhost/decisions/flows/insurance_request in a browser’s address bar. Note that our alias is case-insensitive when it appears in a URL. The flow runs.

Additional Resources

Creating Your First Form Flow