FlowForma Process Automation Showcase

Ursula Cullen00:00

Hello everyone, and welcome to today's webinar hosted by FlowForma Process Automation. My name is Ursula Cullen, I work here at FlowForma, and I'm delighted to have you all along. We have a really exciting session ahead: an interactive virtual demo and live Q&A.

Ursula Cullen00:19

A couple of housekeeping tips. This webinar is being recorded, and we'll share the recording with you after the event. For any assistance, please email info@flowforma.com. Your lines are muted for the whole event, but if you have questions, please use the Q&A function in GoTo Webinar, and share your reactions with the reactions buttons. We have a couple of polls during the event too, so please take part.

Ursula Cullen01:06

We have a packed agenda for this one-hour session. We'll start with an introduction to FlowForma, the fastest time-to-value process automation tool on the market, and we're going to prove that to you today. Robbie will share how FlowForma supports business and IT leaders to achieve their goals, along with some real-world success stories.

Ursula Cullen01:42

The main part of today's session is meeting our new AI features. David Shanley will demonstrate the new FlowForma Copilot, which can digitize a process in under 30 seconds, so get ready to have your socks blown off. He'll also cover our AI summarization feature, and at the end we'll have a Q&A session. We'll try to answer a few questions during the demonstration, and we've allocated time at the end too.

Ursula Cullen02:24

Let me introduce your hosts. I'll be managing things behind the scenes, and I'm joined by Robbie Kane, a solutions consultant here at FlowForma. Robbie is your go-to FlowForma expert: he's seen plenty of companies digitize simple to complex processes across many industries, and he'll share how digitization can support your organization's operational excellence and efficiency goals for 2025.

Ursula Cullen03:03

Next we have David Shanley, a senior solutions consultant at FlowForma. David is committed to supporting organizations as they evaluate FlowForma and demonstrating proof of value, and he'll be demonstrating the power of the FlowForma process automation tool today.

Ursula Cullen03:30

Before we get started, we have a poll. We'd love to hear what's fueling your push for process automation in 2024 and beyond. There are five choices: operational improvements, cost savings, improved data quality, time savings and digital transformation. I can see lots of votes coming in already.

Ursula Cullen04:27

We'll close it there and share the results. Coming in at 67% is operational improvements, closely followed by digital transformation. Are you surprised by those results, Robbie?

Robbie Kane04:45

Not really. There's a fairly even balance, with operational improvements clearly out in front. If anyone who voted for any of those categories would like a consultation around workflow optimization or cost savings, I'd love to be on the other end of that conversation to see how we could achieve those things.

Robbie Kane05:15

I'll give a brief overview of FlowForma. FlowForma is a global leader in enterprise-class digital process automation. It's designed to meet the needs of both business and IT teams, helping them quickly digitize processes, improve data collection and drive operational excellence.

Robbie Kane05:34

FlowForma is the perfect fit for mid-sized to large enterprises that want to empower their teams to digitize and optimize any business process, no matter how complex. In fact, we tend to excel at the complex, because we're process driven. Users can create forms and workflows while generating documents and reports, all within a single platform.

Robbie Kane06:02

With over 300,000 users worldwide, FlowForma is a market leader in digital process automation. Our focus is making sure customers see value quickly: getting their first process live fast, with the goal of delivering real, measurable results within the first six weeks. We encourage customers to use FlowForma across the whole organization, in every department and location.

Robbie Kane06:45

From my background in solutions and delivery, I know customer success is at the heart of everything we do. We take pride in offering world-class support to guide you at every step of your digital automation journey.

Robbie Kane07:00

Our product is used to digitize processes across a wide range of industries, and here are some examples of processes our customers have transformed. In a few moments, David will show you how Copilot can automate one of these processes in seconds.

Robbie Kane07:25

First, integration. In today's business environment, multiple applications are involved in processes, so it's essential they communicate effectively with minimal overhead. One of the ways FlowForma supports this is our no-code Web API Manager, which connects FlowForma to thousands of other systems through any REST-based API. That covers over 10,000 commercial off-the-shelf applications, as well as any custom application with a web API.

Robbie Kane08:01

It's designed to be the most cost-efficient way to build integrations, with rapid configuration compared with traditional code. If you've ever attempted that before, you'll know what I mean, but FlowForma does it with no code. Integration adds significant value by exchanging data and documents between FlowForma and third-party systems: increased accuracy, because master data keeps things consistent; increased speed, because third-party systems are updated instantly; reduced costs, by minimizing errors and pre-populating data; and improved security.

Robbie Kane09:03

Now the new features you're about to see. First, FlowForma Copilot. We know it can take flow builders valuable time to fully understand their organization's business processes, usually by spending time with process owners before automation can begin. Imagine having a process expert available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with detailed knowledge of thousands of business processes, who could help you tailor processes to your exact needs.

Robbie Kane09:58

That's exactly what FlowForma Copilot offers flow builders. Powered by generative AI, Copilot can create a working process in seconds, which you then fine-tune with simple natural language commands. You can share these processes with stakeholders to get their input and approval, then roll them out quickly to meet your automation goals.

Robbie Kane10:27

The second AI innovation is AI summarization. This feature uses generative AI to enhance existing and new flows. You can automatically generate concise summaries of your forms, giving a clear snapshot of a process at any point. It includes a new rule for creating summaries and a feedback question type to rate the quality of the content.

Robbie Kane11:11

The summaries can be displayed within forms, embedded in emails or generated in documents. It's perfect for processes with multiple steps or many questions: participants get a clear text summary without scrolling through previous steps. It's particularly useful in decision-based processes, where every stakeholder gets a concise summary of the journey the process has taken. I'll hand over to David to dive in.

David Shanley12:00

Thanks, Robbie. The plan for the next 40 minutes or so is to look first at what it's like for end users to interact with FlowForma forms. Then we'll look at an incident management process, go under the hood to see how it's built in Flow Designer, and see how Copilot speeds up that build by putting the framework in place for you to build on. We'll also look at analytics and, if we have time, document generation.

David Shanley12:52

I'll start with our SharePoint team site dashboard. As an end user, you can interact with FlowForma in your browser through a link in an email: if a form step needs your attention, click the link and it takes you to the form. If you handle a high volume of forms every day, you might use a SharePoint team site like this one, which is easy to configure and customize. A page like HR forms gives me a working dashboard, where I can work on forms in my queue or start a new one by clicking a tile.

David Shanley13:43

If I click travel approval, the form opens. The header is fully customizable, and the grey step bar shows three steps. A step is a block of content you assign to a person or a group. We're on the initial step, travel request details, followed by line manager approval and general manager approval. These run in sequence, but steps can also run in parallel. We also have a feature called Engage, which lets you bring external parties into a defined step, anonymously or with secure access.

David Shanley14:36

Below the step bar are the questions, including a repeating table here. When I click submit, I'm finished with this step and it moves to the next person. When my manager receives it, they can review the previous step read-only, or the content can be copied through and shown front and center.

David Shanley15:19

Business rules fire here too. If the manager says no, the smart form asks for an amendment, and when they submit, rules pass the form back to the previous step with their comments. This type of rule is called a question change rule: it fires on a trigger question and gives you that smart form interaction. So that's the form: steps assigned to people or groups, and questions, also known as fields.

David Shanley16:02

Now I'll step into incident management. This is a trial environment, and Robbie will talk about trials after the demonstration. I'll edit an existing process flow, which opens Flow Designer. Flow Designer combines forms, workflow, document generation and now Copilot in a single build interface.

David Shanley16:44

I'll switch off Copilot and switch on form preview, because this is how I'd build a form before Copilot arrived. The left panel shows your steps and the questions under each step. The right panel previews what you're building as you build it. The central panel is where you add rules and other configuration.

David Shanley17:16

If this were a webinar from six months ago, I'd be building from scratch, with this panel completely empty. I'd add a step, position it where I want it, then add questions to it. The question editor has all the question types available; I'll pick single line of text. So you add your steps, add questions to each step, then apply your business logic. I'm a two-finger typist, so that takes me a while. Let me show you what Copilot can do instead.

David Shanley18:30

I'll switch on Copilot. This is a chat I've already had with it. As the instructions at the top say, be precise and clear with your queries: use process keywords like step, process and question, and name or number the step or question you mean. I asked it to create an incident management process, and three or four seconds later it came back with six steps, with questions on the first step but not yet on the others.

David Shanley19:12

So I asked it to add questions to each step, and it returned questions for every step. I thought they were a bit long and descriptive, so I removed step six, documentation, which I didn't need, and asked it to shorten the questions. It gave me short question titles instead. Every one of those queries came back in three or four seconds.

David Shanley20:05

At that point I was happy, so I clicked build, and the left panel filled with every step and every question. That's a great starting point and saves me an awful lot of time. Process builders often get bogged down trying to extract information from the process owner, which can be a long process for a complex flow. This gives you a solid framework in seconds that you can then modify.

David Shanley20:54

Here's another session, for a new product innovation process. I ask it to create the steps, and a few seconds later it returns all the steps and a set of questions for each one. Then I ask for shorter question titles.

Robbie Kane21:49

A question while you're working through this, David: how easy is Copilot to use?

David Shanley22:09

It's just natural language commands. They need to be instructional, and you can see what it returned to your previous query. If I want to remove step three, I say remove step three. To remove a question, I say remove question two from step three. Let's try another process: an employee appraisal process. It gives me its interpretation, which is a good one. The only thing I'll do is ask it to make the descriptive questions shorter and snappier.

Robbie Kane23:05

It's really as easy as that.

David Shanley23:09

It is, and that's my natural typing speed. When I click build, the steps and questions come straight into the empty left panel. Now I have the framework and can create a test form right away to see exactly what I have. It's great for visualization and for understanding how to refine the build.

Robbie Kane23:44

That was literally seconds from a natural language command to a process framework you can then discuss and refine. It's amazing.

David Shanley24:00

Like a cookery show, here's one I made earlier. We've clicked build, and these are the steps and questions. Now I'll build on top of what Copilot put together. I'll switch off Copilot and go back to form preview. I'll select the reporter's name question and change it to a person or group question type. The question types align with native SharePoint data types, and we have our own custom types too. I set it to the current user, and it picks me up.

David Shanley25:14

For the contact number, I'll use a list in the background, though you could use a get user profile rule. I have a list called employee details, and I'll use a get list data rule to pull the contact number into the form. Rules have different trigger points. A question change rule fires on its trigger question, so as soon as the name is filled in, the rule pulls the contact number from the list. I'll make the contact number read only.

David Shanley26:08

In the rules menu you can see all the rule categories. Workflow control rules are the ones you'll use 60 to 70% of the time at the outset. Then there are data integration rules: native SharePoint lists and document libraries out of the box, SQL connectors, Logic Apps, Power Automate, our API connections rule, and even CSV mapping for legacy systems, so a flat file can map into a table. There's a lot of depth here.

David Shanley26:46

I set up the get list data rule against the employee details list, filtered where the name equals the reporter's name, and map the contact number. You can save as you go or automatically, and you can create a test form at any point. There, the rule has fired.

David Shanley27:36

Next, I'll change affected system or service to a choice between system and service. If system is chosen, I want the user to pick which system, so I add a lookup to a list, filtered to show only system items from the name column. I hide that question and add a hide/show question rule: if the affected area equals system, show it. It's simple business logic and 100% no code. Conditions can be as complex as you need, and they can trigger multiple actions: showing, hiding, enabling or disabling questions.

David Shanley30:44

I'll make the incident description multiple lines of text and the incident date a date and time. For severity level, I'll use a choice of high, medium and low, with colors: red, orange and grey. To guide users, I'll add a separator, a graphical element on the step, as a warning, and show it only when severity is high, using another hide/show question rule.

David Shanley32:59

I'll also add an image upload, so a user can take a picture of an error on their screen, with a preview and the option to annotate over the image. Let's test it: the business rules fire, a high severity shows the warning and medium hides it, and I can mark up the uploaded image. I'll resize the image, turn incident type into a lookup to a single-column list, and reorder the questions. It's all about agile building: being able to go in and make changes quickly.

David Shanley34:54

Next is AI summarization. I want the summary visible to the owner of the second step, the assessment step, so I add a multiple lines of text question called summary, and a special question type for summarization feedback, with a like and dislike. I make the summary read only. If the user likes what AI summarization generates, a condition can carry that summary through the rest of the flow, for example into generated documents. If not, it's discarded.

David Shanley36:25

Having a single build interface is all about context. When I select a question, I can see its rules, disable or edit them, and see a summary of each rule: for example, if severity level equals high, show the warning. Compare that with having a form or app component that has to be knitted together with a separate automation workflow component. Here, it's all done from one interface.

David Shanley37:11

So far we've used question change rules. Now I'll add a step-level rule on submit of the incident report step: a step completed rule using the AI summarization rule. I choose the input questions, such as reporter's name, affected system, incident type, description and severity, and the output question is the summary on the second step. When I submit a test form, the rule fires and the summary appears on the second step. Any questions coming through, Robbie?

Robbie Kane39:08

There was one around using lists: why would you need to use lists?

David Shanley39:16

Lists are very useful when you want to control how users fill out a form. If you have any kind of structured information, use lists and list matrices, where you can filter and extract information. It saves a lot of time, gives you a single source of truth and better data quality, and massively improves the user experience. And here's the summary: it says I've reported a high-severity incident about system one, where a user can't log in. I'm happy with it, so I click like.

David Shanley39:52

Now I'll add a request clarification question to the second step, as a yes/no question. If the answer is yes, a hidden multiple lines of text question appears for the clarification, using another question change rule. I also add a hidden, read-only clarification question to the first step.

David Shanley41:57

At step level, I add a rule to pass the form back to the first step if clarification is requested, a hide/show question rule to reveal the clarification on the first step, and a set question value rule to copy the comments from the second step back into the first. In a test form, when I request clarification and submit, three rules fire: it passes back, shows the question and sets its value, so the user can make the right change.

David Shanley43:42

The last rule is on the resolution attempt step. I add an escalation required yes/no question and hide the escalation step. If escalation equals yes, a hide/show step rule shows the escalation step. In the test form, choosing yes brings the escalation step in, and choosing no removes it. That's how quickly you can build out a process.

David Shanley44:57

Next, document generation. Our FlowForma Word plugin lets you generate a document from a template of your choice, populated with content from the form instance. You position tokens anywhere in the template, and a generate document rule fills them with the right content. The document can be converted to PDF, routed to a document library, sent to another system through our integration options, or attached to internal and external emails.

David Shanley45:45

You can also apply logic to the generated content. Here, a section only appears if the system answer equals system one; otherwise that content is stripped out and the document contracts to reflect it. You can design the template any way you want.

David Shanley46:27

What I wanted to emphasize is the power of Copilot to take the heavy lifting out of building the framework of a process, and then the speed at which you can build on top of it with 100% no code, in a single build interface where you can see where your rules sit and why. I think that context is as important as the simple business logic itself.

Robbie Kane47:10

There's a question I can take while David sets up: who would be the best person in my organization to build processes, and would they need training? I've been with the company six years and delivered processes across many organizations. Ideally, it's a subject matter expert who knows the process, plus an administrator, and sometimes that's a team. Training is part of onboarding: our SureStart program enables you on your first process, followed by two-day training and then advanced training, so you're comfortable doing what David just demonstrated.

David Shanley48:03

This is an example of our analytics. FlowForma Insights gives you real-time visibility of your data so you can make informed business decisions. FlowForma's advanced reporting pushes data into SQL, where FlowForma Insights picks it up, giving you a single source of truth. You can build dashboards very quickly, and the ones here are all out-of-the-box, pre-built charts. Customers typically use these process charts, then build their own charts on the business data captured in their forms.

David Shanley49:10

Process charts help you spot issues with specific processes. Here, four expense forms are overdue, and I can see them in a table and drill into a specific form. Maybe a process needs refining, user adoption isn't as strong as you'd like, or service level agreements need changing. For leave requests, you can see spikes before the summer holidays and before Christmas, and sick leave rising in the winter months. You can also look at specific individuals and the forms they've created.

David Shanley50:59

To show how easy these dashboards are, I'll create a chart section, choose a pre-built chart for overdue items in progress, and I immediately have a bar chart with drill-down into specific form instances. The pre-built charts cover process performance, time to completion and service level agreements, and you can merge in your own charts on business data. It's all about actionable insights, bringing your data together so you can make informed decisions. Back to you, Robbie.

Robbie Kane52:02

Thanks, David. You can see how Copilot really speeds up development, going from nothing to a working process in a short time. FlowForma is trusted by organizations around the world, from companies with 14,500 employees to smaller businesses with as few as 50. Here's a snapshot of some of our customers.

Robbie Kane52:41

I want to focus on Downer, a leading provider of integrated services in Australia and New Zealand, with over 30,000 employees across 120 locations. They faced delays completing on-site processes, manual errors from paper-based systems, and siloed sites that held back data-driven strategies, while underused applications were a missed opportunity for growth.

Robbie Kane53:08

Downer automated 23 processes, including purchase order requests, project inductions, wages staff timesheets and their batching plant operations process. The benefits included time savings across teams, more efficient integrated workflows, better governance and productivity, data-driven reporting, and a better client perception that fueled their growth, plus a clean audit trail for accountability. Downer saved 1,200 hours on purchase order request forms and 354 hours on project inductions, and digitized processes four times faster than with Power Apps.

Robbie Kane53:58

Some of our other success stories: Abingdon & Witney College saves over 5,000 administrative hours a year with FlowForma, a European hospital eliminated more than 900,000 sheets of paper for a more sustainable operation, and another customer automated over 400 processes in just one year, showing the speed and efficiency of the FlowForma platform.

Robbie Kane54:30

If you want to achieve similar success in your organization, here's a brief introduction to FlowForma's 14-day trial. We're confident our platform will meet and exceed your expectations, which is why we offer a fully supported 14-day trial. It's a risk-free opportunity to prototype, build and deploy an automated digital process in FlowForma, with guided support to choose a process that aligns with your business goals.

Robbie Kane55:09

It gives you the confidence that FlowForma is the right platform, and helps you build a strong business case for investing in digital process automation. You test-drive FlowForma in a fully supported environment with process specialists like David and me, and you end up with a working prototype to help secure internal buy-in.

Robbie Kane55:43

In the first week, we activate your trial environment and licenses for your team, and in consultancy sessions we agree the success criteria for the trial. Then come co-development sessions: in the first, we start building the defined process together, and in the final session we finalize it in FlowForma. Finally, we launch your automated process, giving you first-hand experience of the value FlowForma brings. It's a real differentiator for us.

Ursula Cullen56:36

Thank you so much, Robbie and David, that was a great demonstration. As Robbie said, we offer a 14-day free trial, or you can schedule a one-to-one tailored demonstration with one of our process experts. We're launching a poll now so you can choose which you'd prefer. Our first question, for David: someone uses Power Platform and wants to know how much faster FlowForma is, and why.

David Shanley58:03

I have some experience with Power Platform, and I'd say FlowForma is at least four times faster to build in. With Power Platform, the more complex the process, the greater the effort and time to implement it, because you have your app on one side and Power Automate on the other, and you have to knit the two together. Changing it later takes time too. Maintenance matters as much as the initial build, because processes change over time and you need to make changes without fear of breaking everything.

Ursula Cullen58:55

Thank you, David. Robbie, one last one: Jessica says she's used no-code platforms that weren't really no code. Is FlowForma truly no code?

Robbie Kane59:08

Yes, it's a truly all-in-one solution, as you saw in David's demonstration of Flow Designer. With other solutions you'd typically have forms, then need low-code expertise or development in the background to stitch them into a process. FlowForma is process oriented: everything you saw in Flow Designer is the process, so you never go outside that environment to build an entire process.

Ursula Cullen59:52

Fantastic. That brings us to the end of our webinar. Thank you everyone for joining us, and thank you, Robbie and David, for a really informative session. We hope to see you again next time.