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Version: 10.9.x

Flow Manager Visualizer

Overview

The Flow Manager Visualizer helps you graphically visualize your flow manager service configuration in a simple fashion.

By selecting the Flow Manager menu in the Design Area you will be presented with the list of flow-manager services that are currently configured in your project.

Flow Manager Main Area

In the visualizer you can move through your flow states, see the commands that are triggered upon a state change and view the events that may cause a state transition.

Component description

States

States are represented by cards with a colored border on top. A state can be an initial state (marked as START) or final state (marked as FINAL).

When a state transition finishes, the flow-manager state might issue a command through a channel. This behavior is represented by the small thunder icon below the card. Clicking on it will display more information concerning which command is issued.

Two states with triggered command

info

If the state has no thunder icon, it means that no command is triggered.

Business States

When working on a Flow Manager service you might desire to collapse many states under a single Business State that identifies the business logic that many single steps of the saga represent. When using custom businessStates a different color is applied to each state to help the user clearly visualize states that share the same Business State.

Two states with triggered command

Events

An event is represented by the small card with an arrow icon on its left, all events are displayed below the state where they may cause a state transition.

Event causes state transition

From the displayed example, imagine the flow-manager service current state for a specific saga is the decryptState, there are two different events that may cause a state transition:

  • DECRYPTED event will lead us to the authState;
  • TIMEOUT event will lead us to another state (e.g. a specific state where a timeout error is handled).

In order to simplify the flow visualization, the events that lead to the same state are aggregated together by default and clicking on 'view more', it is possible to expand the view and visualize all of them.

Collapsed event with view more

Collapse/Expand Mode

The default visual setting about the aggregated events and the closed channel panels of the states can be easily switched on/off using the button "Collapse/Expand All", also in highlight mode.

Change Expand/Collapse mode

Highlights

Flow manager state machine can be complex and hard to grasp even when visualized.
For this reason, a highlight mode can be enabled by user: by clicking on the top-right button shown below, it is possible to enter the highlight mode with the aim to colour specific paths in order to clearly follow a specific data flow. In particular, when highlight mode is activated:

  • with one click on an event, it is possible to highlight where the event will lead; then, by repeating the click on the event, the specific highlight is turned off;
  • with one click on a state, it is possible to highlight all the events that may bring the saga to that state; then, by repeating the click on the state, the specific highlight is turned off.
info

User can reset all the highlights that have been progressively turned on by clicking on the top-right button, and consequently exiting the highlight mode.

Highlight disable

Button Panel

fullscreenOn fullscreenOff Activate/Deactivate Fullscreen Mode

legend Open the legend

expand collapse Switch in expand/collapse mode

highlightOn highlightOff Activate/Deactivate Highlight Mode