How to automate business processes with Nextcloud Flow?

A study by McKinsey showed that two-thirds of companies are asking themselves “How to automate business processes”. Pursuing automation in business departments such as Finance, HR, or Customer Service, is becoming an essential business need. And while there might be solutions out there, obstacles remain. Because how do you keep full control over your data with an external tool? Or how do you set up workflows without any programming experience?

Enter: Nextcloud Flow.

With our no-code automation tool, you can streamline your work processes easier than ever. Approving vacation requests, ensuring quick review of documents, or handling payment workflows: Nextcloud Flow is built to make your work life and your team’s projects easier. A couple of clicks is all you need to start turning clunky processes into automated tasks.

And of course, all while staying in charge of your data.

What is Nextcloud Flow?

Nextcloud Flow is an extremely user-friendly automation tool, designed to help organizations streamline tasks and improve productivity. Through an easy-to-use, graphical interface it enables users without programming skills to effortlessly set up workflows to automate routine tasks in businesses of all sizes, from SMEs to large enterprises.

Nextcloud Flow combines various tools in Nextcloud Hub that help automate a variety of processes in your organisation. This combination of features allows Nextcloud Flow to connect triggers and actions, forming a bridge between you and your colleagues or clients.

Let’s look at some examples.

1. A user uploads a file to a folder.
2. This action triggers Nextcloud Flow to convert the file to a PDF.
3. Nextcloud Flow notifies the team via chat about the new PDF.

As Nextcloud Flow also integrates with your Nextcloud ecosystem, you can use it across various apps.

1. A user submits a form, for example a holiday request.
2. Nextcloud Flow automatically stores the data in Nextcloud Tables.
3. Once the data is stored, the user receives a confirmation email.

These examples show how in a couple of automated steps, you are enabled with the necessary information, including files, chat messages, or mails. By ensuring these type of quick replies, small and large companies can reduce noise, better the customer experience, and reclaim their teams’ time.

Of course, Nextcloud Flow is fully adapted to your business needs and can run in sequence or in parallel. Do you still want to ensure a human touch? You can add manual approval in your setup where needed. And as Nextcloud Flow connects with external systems, you can use it for anything, from public-sector tasks like company registration to business processes like invoice handling.

Digital sovereignty meets workflow automation

As workers face the challenge of rising stress and workload, a question like “How to automate business processes?” becomes increasingly important to address. Digital transformation has become a necessity for governments, educational institutions, and businesses to ensure long-term resilience and growth.

With Nextcloud Flow, you access a workflow solution that is:

• 100% open source with a no code interface: By choosing Nextcloud Flow, you avoid vendor lock-in, instead getting to a transparent and auditable automation tool. The drag-and-drop flowcharts ensure that non-tech users can still get powerful results.

• Privately hosted or managed: As Nextcloud Flow operates in an environment of your choice, you are in full control of your data and can ensure GDPR compliance, even for components such as email parsing, digital signatures, PDF generation, and payment integration.
• Fully integrated: Nextcloud Flow is built into your trusted Nextcloud ecosystem, so it is secure by default and easily communicates with your favorite Nextcloud apps, including Nextcloud Mail, Nextcloud Forms, Nextcloud Tables, Nextcloud Assistant, and Nextcloud Office.

A large part of our work day is spent doing routine tasks, even though computers were supposed to free us from such things. With Nextcloud Flow, every user can create custom workflows in minutes. By making automation accessible for everyone, teams can focus on what they do best.

Frank Karlitschek

CEO and Founder of Nextcloud

The tech behind the magic: Nextcloud Flow components

What does the technical side of Nextcloud Flow look like? By combining four key components, Nextcloud Flow becomes a flexible and extensible workflow automation tool.

1. Built-in workflow app: Your assistant to set up triggers and follow-up actions in Nextcloud Flow, such as sending a chat message when receiving a file. This app is ideal for automating simple tasks, and can be found under « Flow » in your settings.
2. Open Collaboration Service (OCS) API: A powerful, open standard API developed by Nextcloud that allows scripting and custom automation, such as connecting third-party tools and apps.
3. Windmill: An open source application that you can install as part of Nextcloud Flow to connect and configure different scripts for advanced business process automation. Options include executing singular actions in Nextcloud, reacting to user input, getting data from an external source, and more.
4. Nextcloud Tables: Structured data organization is guaranteed thanks to custom Nextcloud Tables view to manage your employees’ time off, customer data, health tracking, and much more.

The Nextcloud Flow components make it easier than ever to build custom workflows, including a clear overview of all your data with Nextcloud Tables.

How to automate business processes: use cases

As Nextcloud Flow offers a wide range of applications, it is used for all kinds of tasks and teams. But whatever automation you have set up, the Nextcloud Flow dashboard grants you an overview of all workflows, so admins can see at a glance what is running, paused, and planned. Want to see some use cases at work? These examples show how Nextcloud Flow works transparently, remaining compliant and intuitive for different organizations.

Discover how to automate business processes with Nextcloud Flow

Do you want to discover how workflow automation mitigates bottlenecks and support with repetitive tasks at your company?

With Nextcloud Flow, you turn complex processes into automated solutions within a couple of clicks. The open source and privacy-first approach guarantees full digital sovereignty, for a workflow automation tool that doesn’t compromise on data safety. Ready to see how Nextcloud Flow can lighten the workload for your team? Try it now and discover what digital progress can mean for your business.