View Source

Introduction

This change is mainly to make the day-to-day workflow for implementers easier.
All flows need to end in a 'clean' way, meaning all exitpoints at some point need to be connected to either another 'regular' activity, or a 'Complete Handling' activity.
Besides the cumbersome 'click-and-drag' to connect all points, it also creates a clutter of mainly unneeded links and activities to end the flow.

What we implemented here is a pure UI change where we can quickly connect to a 'Complete Handling' activity, but not need to manually connect or have any links shown in the UI.

Additional quality of life updates

While already poking around in the same code area, advantage was taken to tackle two other issues that could use improvement:

Minor update: zoomable items now have a hand pointer when hovering.
For regular users, this is a non-issue, but for new users, it clarifies where you can or can not zoom in:
A bigger convenient change (IMHO) is that the hitbox of the connectors has increased. This means you no longer have to be pixel-perfect on the connector to start or end a link.
Also, a pen(cil) icon is shown when you can start or end a link for further clarity.
You can see both the icon as well as the distance we can now connect from/to in this screenshot:

Automatic Complete Handling

For this functionality, two context menu items were added:

Connect to Complete Handling
Remove Automatic Connections

The context menu on activities:

Connect to Complete Handling

When selecting this option, all unconnected exit points (e.g. regular or fault) will be automatically linked to the first 'Complete Handling' activity found in the flow.

On the flipside, if there is no 'Complete Handling' activity at all, this will not do anything except showing an error message:

This means at least one 'Complete Handling' activity needs to be present in the flow.
Also note, this activity does not need to have any prior connection to any activity.

The new visual for exit points that are automatically connected are the orange circles, like this:
XTIUM Knowledge Base > XCS Setup: Interaction Handling Flow: Automatic Complete Handling > image-2024-5-22_11-38-45.png

To emphasize: this is a UI change only!
This means the exit points are actually still connected to a 'Complete Handling' activity, only the link is not shown.
So, if you remove the attached activity, the exit points will be invalid again, because they are not connected.

Also, you can still drag a link manually from this exit point to any activity as before and the flow will update accordingly.

Remove Automatic Connection

If you select this option, all automatically connected exit points (e.g. regular or fault) will be cleared and be invalid again until reconnected, either manually or automatically.

Before and after examples

Here are flow examples before this change, and after with the automatic connections applied:

QA - Delta

A semi-fictive flow for Delta on QA.

Before

XTIUM Knowledge Base > XCS Setup: Interaction Handling Flow: Automatic Complete Handling > qa_delta_before.png

After

XTIUM Knowledge Base > XCS Setup: Interaction Handling Flow: Automatic Complete Handling > qa_delta_after.png

Contents