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Flow: from a request to shipped work

Flow takes what you type or say, sorts and ranks it, and follows it from the Inbox to Shipped. A triage employee decides each signal. You can change any decision.

Add a requestLink to Add a request

Type in the field on Flow. To speak, select the microphone. The microphone shows only in browsers with speech recognition.

While you write, a live preview shows the title, the kind, the area and four scores. It also shows the rank, the horizon, possible duplicates, the triage employee and the proposed owner. The preview tells you how long the decision took and which method made it.

Press Ctrl Enter, or ⌘ Enter on a Mac, or select Submit. The new signal gets a key such as SIG-12 and goes to the Inbox.

LanesLink to Lanes

The board has eight lanes: Inbox, Triage, Backlog, Roadmap, Plan, Build, Verify and Shipped. Closed holds rejected, merged, cancelled and failed signals. Select Closed to show it.

Each lane shows the highest rank first. The rank goes from 0 to 100. Impact and urgency count most. Confidence counts a little, and small effort adds a bonus.

Each lane shows its top 25 cards. To see more, select Show all or Show the top 100 at the bottom of the lane. Then select Show 100 more to go further. While the page stays open, the last 10 signals that you added or changed on it stay on the board, also when their rank is lower.

Cards move by themselves when triage decides or the work changes. A card that moved to another lane, or a new card, shows a short highlight. A card that only moves up because another card left its lane gets no highlight.

Triage employeesLink to Triage employees

Each kind of signal has a triage employee:

  • A product manager triages features, improvements, ideas and research.
  • A QA engineer triages bugs.
  • A site reliability engineer triages incidents.
  • A software engineer triages tech debt.
  • A technical writer triages docs.
  • The CEO answers questions.

When no worker has the role, the CEO triages. With no workers at all, rules decide and the card says "Triage desk".

DecisionsLink to Decisions

The triage employee accepts, rejects, merges, asks for detail or escalates each signal. Each decision has reasons, a confidence and a method. The method is rules, System One, a model or a person.

Accept puts the signal in the Backlog for later, or on the Roadmap for now or next. A decision with low confidence goes to a person.

Change a decisionLink to Change a decision

Select a card to open it. Under Override, choose the verdict. You can also change the kind, the priority, the horizon, the owner or the signal to merge into. Write your reasons. Then select Save decision.

The form sends only the values that you change. When triage decides while the form is open, the form shows the new values.

After the work starts, you can only accept. To stop the work, cancel the work item.

When your decision differs from the decision of the triage employee, the triage employee learns from it. Members and above can change decisions. Viewers can read them.

Start workLink to Start work

Accepted work waits until a person selects Start. No owner runs it before then. You can choose a different owner when you start.

SettingsLink to Settings

Select Settings on Flow. Owners and admins can change the settings. Other people can read them.

  • Start accepted work at once is off by default. When it is on, accepted work starts without a wait.
  • Triage new signals automatically is on by default. When it is off, new signals wait in the Inbox.
  • Confirm rejections is on by default. When a triage employee rejects a request from a person, an owner or admin confirms the reject.
  • Triage employee for each kind names one worker for a kind. Without a choice, the role order above applies.

JourneyLink to Journey

Each signal has a Journey link. The Journey shows every step and handoff of the signal.

Checked against the product on 2026-10-14.

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