What are Flows?
Flows allow users to create interactive channels where participants post in response to predefined forms. These feeds are fully customizable and designed to suit a variety of business needs, from social engagement to formal company surveys. Whether you’re gathering feedback, running employee contests, or facilitating company-wide discussions, the Flow Builder offers flexibility to configure the right experiences for your team.
This help article will walk you through the process of creating and configuring a flow, including creating & adding questions, choosing a deadline if desired, and how to manage participation and viewership.
Who can create a flow?
This is configurable by Admins in the Admin settings under Flows → Permissions, found here: https://admin.joinassembly.com/flows/permissions
You can choose who can create flows: Admins & workspace owners, managers, or everyone.
Admins and workspace owners can always create flows.
If you select managers, they’ll also have permission to create flows.
If you select “everyone,” anyone in the workspace can create flows.
Other Flow Permissions include:
Add Entire Organization as Participant: only users with this permission can choose to include the entire organization as participants in a flow.
Add “Give Points” Blocks: this permission lets users create flows where participants can give points to others within the flow.
Enable Point-Giving in Replies (Boosts): ‘Boosts’ allow people to show appreciation in the replies on any flow. Choose whose flows will allow boosts.
Getting Started
Click “Create a new flow” from the Assembly home page.
Choose between:
Template Library – Start with a pre-built template.
Start from Scratch – Build your flow from the ground up.
Note: After you finish creating a flow, whether from a template or from scratch, the final step is to choose who can post and who can view. Don’t worry, no one will see your flow until you decide to share it!
The Template Library
If you choose to start from the Template Library, Assembly provides a set of common flow templates to make setup easier. These templates fall into six different, common categories:
Social & Discussion Channels: Create a place where everyone, or a specific group, can post freely in a feed-like environment.
Company Updates: Designate a feed for company-wide updates that one or multiple administrators can post for the entire organization to view.
Manager Tools: Set up tools for managers to engage in 1-on-1s, give feedback, set goals, and more with their direct reports.
Feedback & Surveys: Create anonymous or identifiable surveys, where only survey administrators can view the results.
Nominations & Contests: Use flows to run employee nominations or contests, with custom nomination options available.
Meetings & Agendas: Use flows to capture meeting agendas and follow up with questions, outcomes, or meeting notes.
Once you’ve selected a template to use, you’ll be able to edit the questions, question details, and if applicable, the schedule settings before creating the flow and adding participants/viewers.
Creating a Flow from Scratch
Whether you’ve selected a template from the Template Library, or you’re creating a Flow from scratch, you’ll be able to add and edit questions of various types.
Customizing Questions: You can add a variety of question types, including:
Open-ended Responses: Allow participants to write as much or as little as needed, with optional character minimums or limits.
Likert (or similar) Scales: Gather feedback on a scale, where you define the high and low labels.
Multiple Choice/Dropdowns: Customize options that participants can choose from in a dropdown or multiple choice format.
Select Person: Often used in nominations, this allows users to select people from a customized dropdown.
File Upload: Enable participants to submit files along with their responses.
GIF Select: Add a fun element by allowing participants to respond with GIFs.
Give Points: Link to Assembly’s recognition system, allowing participants to give points to others directly from the flow.
Net Promoter Score (NPS): A standardized NPS question for gathering feedback on a fixed scale.
Adding Questions & Configuring Question Details
Click the “Add a question” button to start adding questions to your flow.
Choose a question type from the available options, described above.
To access and customize question details, click the “Edit” icon to the left of each question. Click the same button to close that question’s details.
In the Question Details section, you can customize the question specifics. For example, with a multiple-choice question, you can add the selectable multiple choice options and decide if participants can select one or multiple options.
You can always change the question type later if needed (e.g., from multiple choice to a 1-5 scale question).
Note: Changing the question type will reset the question details, but the primary question text will stay the same.
Other basic actions you can take to edit your flow:
Make a question required to answer
Move a question up or down, which changes the order respondents will answer them
Duplicate a question, including it’s content and settings
Delete a question, which removes it from the flow
Setting Up Flow Distribution and Reminders
You can customize how and when participants are allowed to answer a Flow, and when they are prompted or reminded to answer a Flow.
Anytime posting: Allows free-flowing communication. Participants can respond at any time without a specific deadline (often used for Social & Discussion channels).
On a Deadline: Set a specific time window for responses.
What is a deadline? The flow becomes available to answer on a date you choose, and is open for posts for the length of time you choose. Participants receive an email and notification when it’s time to respond. After the deadline, participants can no longer post.
For flows with a deadline, you have the choice to Schedule it or Set manually:
Schedule It: This allows you to schedule the flow’s availability ahead of time, on a specific date and time.
You can set this schedule On a Recurring Basis, where you set the flow to repeat on a regular schedule (e.g., once a week, every weekday).
Or, you can schedule the deadline to occur Just Once: schedule a single deadline ahead of time.
Set Manually: For flows with a deadline, this setting allows you to control the flow manually and trigger the notification to participants whenever needed by clicking a button. You can set the due date at this time, when you’re ready.
You can also set up Reminders to encourage participation, which sends an email and notification to your participants reminding them to post in your flow. Even for flows without deadlines, automated reminders can be sent to participants to promote regular engagement.
Automated Reminders: Automated reminders allow you to schedule reminders.
For flows set to On a deadline, you can choose how many reminders to send during the deadline window.
These reminders will be evenly spaced across the scheduled window.
If you’ve set up a Recurring deadline, the number of reminders you choose to send will be sent during each individual scheduled window.
For flows that are set to post Anytime, you’ll be able to choose a reminder frequency (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.).
Manual Reminders: You can opt to manually trigger Reminders instead. Owners and Collaborators can click "Remind" at any time, from the flow feed itself.
Examples of Distribution & Reminder Schedules by Flow Purpose
Distribution & Reminders Setting | Flow Purpose | Suggested Schedule Settings |
Answer Anytime
| Social Channels Suggestion Box |
|
On a Deadline | One Time Survey |
|
| Recurring Survey |
|
| Weekly 1on1’s |
|
Flow Sharing Settings: Set Who Can Post & View
Once you’ve set up your flow’s questions and Distribution & Reminders settings, you’re ready to share the flow with the team members of your choosing! You’ll be able to control who can view posts in a feed, post to the feed, or do both.
After your flow has been created, you can access the "Share" settings at the top of your Flow feed.
Only flow Owners or Collaborators can change the sharing settings on a flow. As a flow owner or collaborator, you’ll see a “Share” button when you navigate to the flow you own or collaborate on.
Who Can Post: Define which users or groups can post answers.
Who Can View: Decide which users can view others’ posts, but cannot post themselves.
Post & View: People who can post and view will be able to both post and view others posts.
Examples of Share Setting by Flow Purpose
Flow Purpose | Suggested Sharing Settings |
Social Channels
|
|
Surveys |
|
Company Announcements |
|
Anonymous Suggestion Box |
|
Changing Anonymity Settings
Open the "Share" settings on your Flow
Select "Change settings" under Post Settings
Select whether you want responses to be anonymous, optionally anonymous, or never anonymous
Owners and Collaborators
Each flow can have one owner and multiple collaborators. Owners and collaborators share the same permissions, which include:
Editing the content of the flow
Adjusting distribution settings and sending reminders
Managing viewership and participation permissions
Assigning or changing the owner and collaborators
Note: As of this article’s writing, collaborators cannot archive flows. This additional collaborator capability is expected to be added soon!
Adding Collaborators & Changing Owners
Open the Flow Editor
Click on “Edit Owners & Collaborators” (below the Flow Description, and above the Content section)
Search for the person you want to add as a collaborator on the flow, or who you want to grant ownership
Important notes:
There can only be one Flow Owner per Flow, so you’ll need to ensure one person is selected as the Owner before saving.
If you're the Flow Owner but wish to grant ownership to someone else, you must make yourself a Collaborator to retain the ability to manage the flow
Editing a Flow
After you’ve created a flow and even after sharing, you can still make edits to the flow’s questions and Distribution & Reminders.
How to edit a flow:
Navigate to the flow you wish to edit (you must be an Owner or Collaborator)
Navigate to the Editor for that flow
Make desired changes and click Save
Important notes:
You cannot edit a flow if the flow is On a Deadline, and a scheduled posting window is currently open
You can choose to stop the current deadline window, at which point you’ll be able to edit the flow
Note that edits to the flow’s Questions will create a new dataset of flow response analytics. When you download the Flow response data CSV, responses to different versions of the flow will be separated into different tabs.
Archiving a Flow
Archiving a flow allows you to remove it from the list of available flows in the Assembly platform, cleaning up your workspace. There are multiple ways to archive a flow:
Navigate to the Flows page and click the “...” more options button, and select Archive
Navigate to the Flow itself and click on the “...” more options button at the top of the page, and select “Archive”
Or, after a flow schedule has ended, you’ll also see a banner allowing you to archive the flow as shown below.
Conclusion
Flows in Assembly offer immense flexibility for gathering data, running social channels, and creating structured forms that meet your business needs. With the ability to customize participation, questions, and reminders, you can ensure your flows deliver the right information to the right people at the right time.