A better way to organize workflows.

[politicus]

I've been trying to reorganize my 200 workflows these last weeks. I wanted to be able to find them as fast as possible. Adding a category to each of them, while helpful was not always "working". I sometimes have 15 workflows in one category, so I can't filter them only using the search bar. 

 

So, I decided to group them (i.e. putting all the workflows that let me launch a website into a "simple workflow"). I found it was way more effective because I had less results when I was searching for one workflow. 

 

The problem I still have is that for example for my website launchers (= open this url in the default browser actions) workflows, it can become quite a mess quite fast.

 

For example, when you have 26 little workflows you want to add one new little action to the 13th workflow -> you have to reorganize  the 14th, 15th, 16th ..., 26th workflows. Or, you'll get this:

 

 

 

 

 

One solution would be able to be able to put these workflows in little"modules". Think about the way actions are displayed in Automator. You can drag them, close one by clicking on a cross. But the most important, they act as block.  For a basic pinky (ugly?) proof of concept made in less than a minute in Skitch: 

 

 

 

 

 

That way, one could add actions to one workflow without having to reorganize all of them.

 

What do you think ?  

[jdfwarrior]

I've been trying to reorganize my 200 workflows these last weeks. I wanted to be able to find them as fast as possible. Adding a category to each of them, while helpful was not always "working". I sometimes have 15 workflows in one category, so I can't filter them only using the search bar. 

So, I decided to group them (i.e. putting all the workflows that let me launch a website into a "simple workflow"). I found it was way more effective because I had less results when I was searching for one workflow. 

The problem I still have is that for example for my website launchers (= open this url in the default browser actions) workflows, it can become quite a mess quite fast.

For example, when you have 26 little workflows you want to add one new little action to the 13th workflow -> you have to reorganize  the 14th, 15th, 16th ..., 26th workflows. Or, you'll get this:

One solution would be able to be able to put these workflows in little"modules". Think about the way actions are displayed in Automator. You can drag them, close one by clicking on a cross. But the most important, they act as block.  For a basic pinky (ugly?) proof of concept made in less than a minute in Skitch: 

That way, one could add actions to one workflow without having to reorganize all of them.

What do you think ?  

 

The little bubbles idea seems nice and may work for small, simple workflows but would quickly become a mess for more advanced workflows 

[politicus]

You're absolutely right. Simple workflows were the only use case I was thinking about.

[deanishe]

Re-arranging workflows by hand can indeed be tedious.

It would be helpful if Alfred had a "reflow" command to correctly re-distribute the elements in a workflow.

It would basically just start at the topmost elements and work its way down, ensuring each element has the default amount of space between it and the previous element, with essentially the same result as deleting and re-adding each element in turn.

[cands]

I think that a more powerful search function in the Workflow area within Alfred Preferences would be helpful. For example, sometimes I don't remember the name of a workflow but I remember the name of the author. I think it would be great if the search function would search for author names and other appropriate information contained within the Workflow area (not sure what the current scope of search is, it includes keywords which is good, but does it also search within scripts etc.?). Searching for info within the Workflow area could perhaps even be integrated into Alfred's main search function.