Why a fixed workflow is not enough
No two sign shops work alike. One has a manager approval after design, another sends the job straight to the foreman; one has separate CNC and paint teams, another does everything in one workshop. A team forced into fixed stages soon goes back to discussing the real status in a chat.
In SignFlow the workflow is your company's own data. You set the stages' names, order, rework paths and which role works where, and the order screens, the board, the lists and the mobile app all follow it.
Stage kinds
| Kind | What it does |
|---|---|
| Standard | A plain step one team owns: order entry, manager approval, production chief. |
| Design | A designer is assigned; the order leaves only through design approval. |
| Parallel production | Splits the job across chosen departments at once; the responsible one finishes last. |
| Department | One lane of parallel production: CNC, paint, workshop, electrics and LED. |
| Packing | The last working stage once production is done. |
| Installation | For orders with field installation planned. |
| Purchasing | Where material requests leave the main flow. |
Stages, transitions and roles
A move that is not in the workflow cannot be made from any screen: dragging on the board, bulk moves and the mobile app follow the same rule.
- Transitions are drawn from one stage card to another. Forward moves advance the order; a rework path back, such as production to design, shows as a dashed line.
- A transition can be limited to certain order types, and each order type starts at one stage.
- Roles are attached to each stage. Members in those roles see and work the orders there; a stage without roles is flagged with a warning.
- When an order reaches parallel production, whoever moves it picks the departments and the responsible department that finishes last. The responsible department cannot close until the others are done and a file of the finished work is on the order; the last task moves the order to packing by itself.
Target hours and sub-statuses
Each stage can have a target in hours, and in parallel production each department has its own. Time is counted in calendar hours. The order's flow view shows how long it spent at each stage and how much time is left or how late it is. While the order waits for the customer's approval, the stage clock stops.
Sub-statuses are finer states inside a stage, such as “At chrome plating” in production. Each stage takes up to 20 options with colours from a fixed palette, and the list filters by them. A removed option is archived: orders carrying it keep showing it until they change, and it can no longer be picked. Options are also edited in the sub-status settings, where one option per stage can be set to apply automatically while the customer's approval is awaited.
Publishing changes safely
Removed stages are archived, so past orders and records still show them by name.
- 1
Work on a draft
In Settings → Workflow you add stages from the palette on the left and edit them in the panel on the right. Undo and redo work, and nothing affects the team until you publish.
- 2
Check the problem list
An order type with no starting stage, a stage nothing leads to, or parallel production with no way out are errors that block publishing. Things that would strand orders, such as a stage with no way forward, show as warnings.
- 3
Review the summary
Before publishing, the changes are listed in plain words. If you removed a stage that still holds orders, you choose here where those orders go.
- 4
Publish
The workflow is published as a whole. If someone else changed it meanwhile, your draft does not overwrite theirs; you can download your draft as a file and reload the current workflow.
The workflow you start with
When your company account opens, a working workflow is ready: Order entry → Design → Manager approval → Production chief → Production (parallel: CNC, Paint, Workshop, Electrics and LED) → Packing, plus Purchasing and Field installation. Roles are created and attached too, so you can run a first order end to end without opening the editor, then rename stages, departments and paths to fit your shop.