Get Your Mitts On GridIron Flow 1.0, A Stunning Workflow Manager

Written by Steven Walling / June 29, 2009 7:00 AM / 3 Comments

GridIron Software has finally brought Flow, its visual workflow manager, out of public beta.

This first stable version available for purchase ups the ante by allowing groups to collaborate on a workflow via the Share Maps feature, as well as adding direct access to Flow from within Adobe applications.

Flow was created with the help of visual designer Mark Coleran, who is known for his work on films such as The World Is Not Enough and the Bourne series. Though it's aimed squarely at creative professionals, Flow is probably the most advanced workflow manager out there, and is well worth a closer look by almost anyone.

During its public beta, Flow was already being hailed as a cutting edge way to organize workflows. On top of the slick interface for creating a workflow map, features such as automatic time tracking, visual search and versioning made it something of a designers dream.

But for managing the projects that actually used the workflow you just created, Flow was limited to purely individual use, since it had no robust method for sharing a workflow map among a team.

Enter "Share Maps", the most expansive addition to Flow's public debut. The new feature makes room for creating a workflow group that can all have access to the same map. In addition to enabling real collaborative workflow creation in Flow for the first time, Share Maps means project managers can now join in. That's sure to make it something more friendly to enterprise use.

The next integration should place Flow one step closer to becoming an essential utility for designers during their work. An Adobe CS4 Flash Panel now included in the package allows users to access their workflow maps directly inside Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign or Flash.

GridIron Flow can be bought through the site for $299 per single license or $399 for three. 1.0 also now supports both PCs and Macs, and there is a free trial as well for those who are still curious to give it spin.

Comments

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Be sure to check out the tutorials on the Gridiron website. (http://gridironsoftware.com) There are so many features to Flow, it's hard to know which one will be special to you.. for me it's the All file search, which pops up results based on anything, even metadata and layers. Also, timetracking is super useful to anyone who struggles with time sheets.

Hope you enjoy the product as much as I have enjoyed making it.

Keri Matthews
QA Gridiron

Posted by: Keri Matthews | July 3, 2009 12:57 PM

Having worked with the Gridiron folks on the private beta from quite early in the development cycle, I can add that the attentiveness and determination of the engineering team to create something that was what we (the graphics community) really needed was unique in my experience.

We would ask for features that required, in some cases, major (and painful, I am certain) architectural changes. But the changes were made and the features are in the shipping product. Amazing.

Flow's completely changed the way I work, and I couldn't now imagine working without it any more than I could imagine going back to working without a computer (which was a Very Long Time Ago -- you don't want to know how long).

Posted by: Alan Gilbertson | July 7, 2009 10:19 AM

And Flow is every bit as good as it looks. Having been testing it for months in private beta, and having long since passed the point where I could live without it, I consider it an essential part of any professional design workflow.

This program was a great idea to start with, but the dev team really listened to what we were telling them in the beta and made some major changes so they could get items from our wish-lists into the shipping product. So there was a lot of designer/videographer/photographer input into what is now Flow 1.0, and it really shows.

Posted by: Alan Gilbertson | July 13, 2009 11:44 PM