Gumloop's new look and feel

We just rolled out a huge upgrade to the Gumloop experience.

If you're an existing user, it will feel very different at first but trust us, it's better.

Let me explain why.

What's the change?

Basically, we've simplified the experience of connecting nodes together in workflows.

Don't worry, everything is totally backwards compatible. Nothing will break. Flows just got simpler to build moving forward.

Previously, you had to drag every single output into every single input between nodes when building flows. This was fine for simple flows but as your ideas grew in complexity and more connections were made, the canvas became visually overwhelming — leading to spaghetti (as we called it internally).

We've completely changed the way data is mapped from one node to another. You can now pass all outputs from one node, into the following node with one connection.

Instead of mapping outputs to inputs directly, you connect two nodes. Doing so makes the outputs of the original node available in the connected node. Mapping — which is saying "I want this input to be used here" — now happens in the node itself.

This might seem like a random change in our UX but it leads to huge improvements in the user experience.

Why is it better?

Here's why:

'The Spaghetti Problem' 🍝

If you've ever built a really complex Gumloop flow before you'll be familiar with the spaghetti that the flow turns into. The screenshot above is a tame example, imagine when you have 50+ columns to map.

Passing tons of data from one node to another becomes a dexterity challenge and terrifying to look at once it's all connected.

No more spaghetti. This new UX makes workflows easier to build and easier to share! You won't be scaring people away with your terrifying nest of connections.

The (near) death of combine text

Previously, you needed to use the combine text node in order to format prompts and data for the following node. Now, you can do all this formatting on the nodes themselves! Here's an example of how flows changed with this upgrade.

You'll still be able to use combine text when you want, but you'll have to use it much less frequently. This will massively reduce the number of nodes on the canvas overall.

This also solves a lot of the input/ouput naming issues people have complained about! No more scratching your head trying to trace back to see where 'input 7' came from.

Here's a video walkthrough of the changes:

Conditional Paths

One of the most annoying parts about Gumloop was if/else statements. Having conditions in your flows was a massive pain if you had many piece of data to pass through each condition.

Now, not only are if/else statements much simpler but we will be able to add 'switch statements' soon. This will allow for many conditions to be super easily supported.

Ex: Imagine wanting a path to handle PDFs vs PNGs vs MP4s and other types in one flow. Previously painful, soon to be easy.

What’s next?

This upgrade is a big step forward in making Gumloop easier to use, taking us one step closer to our goal: allowing you to automate anything you can describe. It also lays the foundation for tackling a lot of feedback we've heard from you around other unintuitive parts of building in Gumloop (list mismatches, anyone?).

This new way of automating was built hand in hand with you, our users, thanks to the feedback you shared with us. We thank you for that. Now we ask that as we roll this out, you continue providing us with feedback so we can improve Gumloop!