Decorating the stage#

Behind the tasks that make up a flow there is a great deal of information about the logic of the flow itself. When developers design a flow, they very often create task sequences performing a unique operation in the business logic.

The flow business logic acts behind the scenes, and is of the utmost importance, so it needs to be clearly conveyed to all users who are going to use the developed flow.

For this reason, it is useful to customize the stage by dragging and dropping graphical objects onto the stage to better highlight groups of tasks or to write notes on the logic implemented in a specific flow.

In Rulex Factory, all the graphical objects are called Widgets and can be dragged and dropped onto the stage.

They are all available in the Widgets’ panel, which is located at the bottom right side of the stage window, just below the Task panel.

The list of widgets available in Rulex Factory is the following:

  • Shapes

    • Rectangle

    • Round Rectangle

    • Square

    • Circle

    • Ellipse

    • Diamond

  • Lines

    • Diagonal Line

    • Horizontal Line

    • Vertical Line

    • Curve

  • Arrows

    • Arrow

    • Double arrow

    • Multi arrow

    • Multi double arrow

    • Split end arrow

    • Pointer

    • Rounded pointer

    • Chevron

    • IBeam arrow

  • Text

Procedure

  1. Drag and drop a widget onto the stage.

  2. Click on the widget to move it and to reshape it.

  3. Customize the widget’s settings in the Inspector panel, which replaces the Widgets’ panel when a widget in the flow is selected.

Widget Inspector#

When a widget is dropped onto the stage you can select it in the same way you select tasks or links.

Once a widget is selected, the Widgets’ panel is replaced by the Widgets Inspector which allows the user to customize the widgets that have been just dropped.

In this panel, the following options are available:

  • figure: the type of widget

  • width: the width of the widget

  • height: the height of the widget

  • angle: the widget rotates according to the measure in degrees of the angle entered with respect to its center

  • fill: the widget color background

  • brush: the gradient of the color background

  • stroke: the borderline color

  • strokeWidth: the borderline width

  • dashType: the borderline style

  • opacity: the transparency of the background

  • zOrder: the z coordinates controlling the position on foreground or on background with respect to tasks and links.

Tip

The zOrder field can also be set by right-clicking on the widget and a widget context menu will instantly appear with the following options:

  • Bring to front: changes the z coordinates, so that they are on top of all the other objects.

  • Send to back: changes the z coordinates, so that they are behind all the other objects

  • Delete: deletes the widget. The same operation can be carried out with the Del key shortcut.

  • Copy: copies the widget for a subsequent Paste operation onto the stage.