FlowShare includes a feature to analyze and combine steps either automatically or manually. You can independently edit steps in the FlowShare application while combining them in the final exported documents (e.g. DOCX, PPTX, PDF, HTML) to save space and keep clarity.
1. Settings for Combining steps
To adjust the behavior of step combinations, navigate to the Settings menu and select the General tab. Here, you can manage all related settings.
Perform step combining analysis after recording: Ensure this is enabled to analyze captured images immediately after recording.
Step combining behavior:
Loose: Combines more steps, with a higher chance of errors.
Strict: Combines fewer steps, ensuring higher accuracy when images are identical.
Automatically combine steps when possible: Controls whether steps are automatically grouped after a flow is recorded. If it is not enabled than you can still manually group related steps.
2. Automatic combining when steps are recorded
Automatic grouping simplifies flow creation by combining steps automatically during the initial recording of a flow. These combined steps appear in the "Preview" section. If you wish to modify the grouped steps, you can ungroup them using the context menu or disable automatic grouping in the settings.
Recent versions of FlowShare automatically preview combined steps in the edit view, marked with the “Preview” label.
3. Manually Combine Steps
To manually group steps, use the green Group icon at the top. The icon becomes active only if the analysis was enabled earlier and FlowShare identifies steps that can be combined.
When a selected step can be combined with the previous one, the Group button activates and will become green. Click the button to combine the lower step with the one above it.
After combining, you will see a preview of the resulting image for export.
Please note! Grouping slides is only possible for analyzed content and cannot be applied to unrelated or significantly different slides.
4. Ungroup a Combined Step
If the combined result isn’t satisfactory, you can ungroup the sequence easily:
Right-click on the Preview image and select Ungroup. This separates the combined steps back into individual steps.
Individual steps can then be reconnected using the green Group icon at the top, if needed.
To disable automatic combining for future flows, adjust the settings accordingly.
5. What Can You Edit in a Combined Step?
Texts: Edit texts from individual intermediate steps within a combined sequence.
Section Headline: Add a headline to the first intermediate step for the combined sequence (and not on the Preview slide!)
Image Cropping: Crop a combined sequence using the Crop icon in the Preview slide.
Blur: Apply a blur effect to any intermediate step in the combined sequence.
Rotate Markups/Arrows: Modify the orientation of numbered arrows by editing them in the intermediate step.