The workflow editor tool panel
The panel down the left of the workflow editor holds everything that acts on the canvas rather than on a job: finding a job, adding one, hiding cards you are not working on, and moving the view around.
From the top:
| Section | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Search Jobs | Find a job in this workflow and jump to it |
| New Job | Add a job, optionally of a chosen job type |
| Card Filters | Hide whole categories of card |
| Frequencies | Hide the jobs of a given frequency |
| Canvas Tools | The minimap, the SVG export, and the view controls — docked at the bottom |
Collapsing the panel
The toggle at the top of the panel collapses it to a narrow icon rail and expands it again. Collapsed, it keeps only the toggle, Search Jobs and an icon-only New Job — every section below is removed rather than squeezed, so the canvas gains the width.
The choice persists as you move around the editor, so a panel you collapsed stays collapsed.
Search Jobs
Selecting the search icon opens a search box over the canvas. It searches this workflow's jobs only — there is no wait while anything loads, because nothing is fetched.
A job matches on its name or its job type, and job type matches on both the name you see and
the underlying catalog name — so typing Windows Command and typing windows-command both find the
same jobs. Each result shows the job name with its job type underneath.
Choosing a result moves the canvas to that job. Arrow keys move through the list, Enter chooses the highlighted one, and Escape closes the box and clears what you typed. With nothing matching, the list says No matching jobs.
It is an icon button in both states, so a collapsed panel does not have to be expanded to find a job.
New Job
New Job adds a job. It is a split control: the main half adds a job directly, and the arrow half opens Quick Add by Job Type, which creates the job with a job type already set.
The quick-add list offers Null Job, Workflow Container, Wait for File, Run Command, Run Script, UNIX Command, Windows Command and IBM i Command — but only those your tenant actually has. A job type whose plugin is not seeded for you is not offered, rather than being offered and then failing. See the job type catalog for the full set.
Task walkthrough: Create a workflow.
Card Filters
Five switches, each hiding a category of card. All start on.
| Switch | Hides |
|---|---|
| Frequencies | The frequency names on job cards — the cards stay, their cadence line goes |
| Thresholds | Threshold dependency cards |
| Resources | Resource dependency cards |
| Expressions | Expression dependency cards |
| External Jobs | Cross-workflow predecessor cards |
The last four hide the read-only dependency cards described in Dependencies. They are a way to get a crowded canvas down to just the jobs and the arrows between them. Hiding a card hides the arrows into it as well, so nothing is left pointing at empty space.
The two filter groups also work together: a dependency card whose jobs have all been hidden by the Frequencies switches below goes as well, even with its own switch left on. A requirement only shown because of jobs that are no longer on the canvas would be describing something you cannot see.
Under Card Filters, Frequencies only controls whether frequency names are printed on the cards. It does not remove any job. The switches that remove jobs are in the Frequencies section below, and the two are easy to confuse because they share a word.
One thing the display switch cannot hide: a job with no frequency at all still shows its warning state, because that is a problem with the job rather than a detail of its cadence.
Frequencies
One switch per frequency used in this workflow. A frequency's jobs are on the canvas when its switch is on, and gone when it is off. Every switch starts on, so the canvas begins complete.
- Jobs with no frequency assigned are grouped under (No frequency), which appears only when the workflow has such a job.
- A workflow with no frequencies at all shows No frequencies in this workflow.
- Turning every switch off legitimately empties the canvas. That is the switches being taken at their word, not a fault.
- A frequency you switched off and then deleted from the workflow does not come back switched off if you add it again.
These switches decide what an export contains. A job hidden here is not in the file produced by SVG Image — which makes the switches a deliberate way to export part of a large workflow, and a way to get an incomplete export by accident. See Export the canvas as an SVG image.
Canvas Tools
Docked at the bottom of the panel, so it stays reachable however long the filter lists grow.
The minimap
A small map of the whole workflow: every job as a block, every dependency as a line, and a rectangle showing the part you are currently looking at. A selected card is picked out in the map as well.
Select anywhere on the minimap to go there — the canvas centres on the point you chose and keeps its current zoom. On a workflow too large to see at a useful zoom, this is the quickest way across it.
An empty workflow shows No nodes.
SVG Image
Downloads the diagram as an SVG file. It has its own page, including what the image contains and the one limitation worth knowing before relying on it: Export the canvas as an SVG image.
The view controls
A row of icon buttons under the export. Each has a tooltip naming it.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Zoom in / Zoom out | Step the zoom level |
| Fit view | Zoom and pan so the whole workflow is on screen |
| Re-layout | Re-draw the graph, laying the cards out from their dependencies again |
| Undo (Ctrl+Z) | Step back through canvas changes |
| Redo (Ctrl+Shift+Z) | Step forward again |
Undo and Redo are unavailable when there is nothing to step to, so the buttons themselves tell you whether there is any history left.
Re-layout is the one to reach for after adding several jobs, when cards have ended up overlapping or the arrows have become hard to follow — it discards the current positions and derives the layout from the dependencies.
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Likely cause | Resolution |
|---|---|---|
| The canvas is empty but the workflow has jobs | Every Frequencies switch is off | Turn one back on. |
| Jobs are missing and I did not filter anything | A Frequencies switch was left off from earlier work | The switches persist while you work — check them before concluding jobs are gone. |
| Frequency names have gone from the cards | Card Filters → Frequencies is off | Turn it on. The jobs never left; only their cadence line did. |
| A job type is missing from Quick Add | That job type is not in your tenant's catalog | Expected. See the job type catalog. |
| An exported image is missing jobs | Those jobs are hidden by a Frequencies switch | The export follows the canvas. Turn the switches on and export again. |
| Undo does nothing | There is nothing left to undo | The button is unavailable in that state. |
| Cards overlap after I add jobs | The new cards have no layout position yet | Re-layout. |
| Searching finds nothing for a job I can see | The search covers job name and job type, not other fields | Search the name as it appears on the card. |
| The panel has no sections in it | It is collapsed | Use the toggle at its top to expand it. |
Related topics
- Create a workflow (Builder) — the task walkthrough
- Export the canvas as an SVG image — what the filters do to an export
- Job dependencies — the cards the filters hide, and what the arrows mean
- Forecast view — the other way the canvas gets redrawn
- Job type catalog — every job type, and which plugin provides it