There are a few certainties in this modern life. Among them: the sun will rise, the sun will set, and the work will flow. Adobe hasn’t yet built an app to control the sun (sounds more like a Google project), but they are offering a new app to help you organize your workflow. It is called WorkflowLab and you can download it for free at Adobe Labs.
WorkflowLab is beta software. It’s a work in progress, so expect there to be missing features. After you play with it, you’ll probably think of a million things to add to it. But it’s a very interesting start.
Here’s the full description from Adobe Labs:
WorkflowLab is a new Adobe® AIR® application that provides an easy way to learn about, track and share workflow best practices. It provides designers, developers and project managers with a common way to learn, build, annotate, share and track workflows for designing and developing projects. WorkflowLab includes a number of workflow starting points and enables users to easily share and track workflows.
WorkflowLab is currently in development and a beta build is available for download. In this updated build, WorkflowLab has added a number of usability features that make it easy to author workflows and track their progress as you learn about best practices.
WorkflowLab was designed and developed using the latest tools from the Adobe Flash Platform and the Creative Suite 4 including Flash Catalyst, Flash Builder 4, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe InDesign. The tool includes a starting point that shows how WorkflowLab itself was created.
Among the samples that come with WorkflowLab is one based on the InDesign to Kindle Store eBook white paper.
Click the image for a full-size view.
A workflow is represented as a sequential set of tasks. These tasks can be labeled, re-ordered, sized (to some extent), duplicated, etc.
You can tag tasks with color-coded categories.
You can assign status to tasks.
You can also add resources to tasks?
?as well as links and comments.
The comment editor has a nice, mini Buzzword-like tool.
You can learn a lot more by checking out the user forum devoted to WorkflowLab questions, feedback, and feature requests.
Also check out Doug’s Cascade, the blog of Doug Winnie, the Principal Product Manager for Adobe Flash Catalyst, Flash Platform Workflow, and WorkflowLab.
Now, on with the ‘flow.
This article was last modified on December 20, 2021
This article was first published on January 26, 2010
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