Architect flow size
Use Flow Size to track and manage the size of your Architect flow as well as proactively organize and optimize your flow during the design process. The insights that Flow Size provides make it easier for you to do the following:
- Understand how each element of your flow affects the overall flow size.
- Spot resource-heavy flow components, and adjust or simplify them at an early design stage.
- Make a timely decision on when to divide your flow into multiple flows before the size of your flow reaches the limit.
Access Flow Size in the Architect > [selected flow] > Insights and Optimizations menu.
Click the image to enlarge.
Flow size indicator
As you build a flow, you can track the size of your flow using the flow size indicator under Insights and Optimizations.
The Flow Size tab includes a horizontal bar that visually represents how much your flow currently uses of the maximum allowed flow size. The fill level and color of the bar indicate usage intensity. Architect also adjusts the color of the Flow Size icon accordingly to give you immediate visual feedback on your current flow size status.
This table describes the four flow size warnings:
| Size indicator | Percentage reached | Indicator color | Restrictions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Low | Lower than 30% of the allowable maximum size | Blue | None |
| Medium | 30% of the maximum size allowed | Yellow | None |
| High | 70% of the maximum size allowed | Red | None |
| Full | 98% of the maximum size allowed | Red |
You cannot publish the flow, but you can save changes to it. Note: If a flow reaches 100% of the maximum size allowed, you cannot save the flow, but you can export it. |
- Common module flows have a lower size limit than other flow types.
- The flow size can increase or decrease as elements go in and out of error. For example, an action within a task does not count toward the flow size if it is in error. If you resolve the error, you are validating the action and making it count toward the flow size. The size addition may become significant if you resolve an error that simultaneously impacts multiple actions in the flow.
- Under Insights and Optimizations, click Flow Size. In the upper right corner of the Flow Size window, you can see the overall size usage as a percentage.
- To view more details, including the percentage contribution and count of each element type, hover over the percentage icon.
You can view a breakdown of the percentage contributions made by individual flow elements and identify components that consume more resources.
To view an element’s contents and their size contribution:
- Under Insights and Optimizations, click Flow Size.
- In the Flow Size page, enter the name of the element that you want to open in the search box.
- (Optional) Use the Types option to filter the search results based on the element type. For example, select Tasks in the filter options if you are searching for a task element.
- Click the name of the element.
You can view the contents of the element and their percentage-wise contribution to the flow size. For example, if you select a task element, you can drill down through the list of actions and find the size of each action. - (Optional) Click Go To to navigate to the specific element, action, or setting in the flow.
- Though Knowledge falls under the Natural Language Understanding (NLU) tree, it is accounted for calculating the total flow size and it is displayed under the flow element type, Settings.
- Actions are counted as part of tasks.
These tips can help reduce the size of a flow:
- If you have multiple Update Data actions in a row, each with one update statement, consolidate the actions into one Update Data action that contains multiple update statements.
- Avoid duplication. Consider the fact that certain actions such as Call Data Action, Call Secure Data Action, Set Screen Pop, Create Callback, and Call Data Actions can consume a large amount of space depending on how you configure the inputs, success outputs, and failure outputs.
If you have multiple instances of the same action with generally the same configuration except for a few different settings, best practice recommends that you update the logic to have one instance of the action, and then use variables to pass in the values that change. Along with reducing flow size, this method is more maintainable in the future. If you must change a setting that previously was common throughout all instances of the action, you now must only update the setting in the single instance of the action.
