Welcome To Nucleus Flows

If you're new around here, you might be wondering: What in the world is a "Flow"? 🤔 By definition, a "flow" is a continuous, steady stream of something. In the Nucleus world, a Flow is like a form that people can submit information to you through your website, but it's so much better than any form you'd typically see on a website.

We call them Flows instead of forms because the experience of filling out a Flow feels like a continuous stream of moving from one step (i.e. field) to the next.

There's a phrase we like to use around here: Anything forms can do, Flows can do better. Ready to see for yourself? Let's dive in.

In this guide, we'll cover the following topics. Click on any one to jump ahead.

Elegant & Friendly With Increased Completion Rates

By careful design, Flows perform better than other form solutions. Because they only show one step at a time, people are less likely to become overwhelmed with the amount of information they need to input and abandon ship halfway through, or worse, not even start at all.

Because of this step-by-step format, they're easy for people to use (even when you need to collect a lot of info). With Nucleus Flows, typically churches see much more completions than forms - with less effort.

Not only this, but Nucleus Flows just look beautiful compared to typical forms you normally see on other websites. Complete with your church's branding (logo and colors), along with what's already been said, Nucleus Flows are inviting for people to go through each step to completion, ensuring your church doesn't lose out on potential submissions.

Start From Scratch Or With A Template

While you are more than welcome to create your own Flows from scratch, we understand that there are certain types of information that most churches invite people to share with them, or certain types of submissions that they wish to collect.

When starting from scratch, the world is your oyster, and you can add as many steps as you'd like. (More on what those steps are below.)

If that seems overwhelming, try starting with a template. You can always edit what's there and customize the Flow to exactly what you need.

Overview Of Flow Steps

When creating a Flow, you have 8 different steps you can choose from. Aside from the Smart Contact and Payment step, which can only be added once to a single Flow, you can add multiple amounts of all other steps.

While there is no limit on how many steps you can add, just know that the more steps you do add will increase the chances of someone getting halfway through and abandoning ship. So while some Flows will naturally require more steps than others, the key is to make it as short and simple as possible.

Below is an overview of each type of step and what you can do with them. For a more in-depth guide on each step's capabilities, click here.

  • Smart Contact: Ask for a name, email, and other info of the person to whom the submission will be linked.
  • Multiple Choice: Ask people to choose from a list of options. You can allow for multiple selections or limit them to just one option.
  • Text Entry: Ask for open-ended responses. You can suggestion short or long answers.
  • Information: Show more details and agreements. This can be helpful when needing to provide additional info in the middle of a Flow to help someone navigate the rest of the Flow.
  • File Upload: Allow someone to upload photos or documents. This can be helpful when needing types of information that cannot be added in the Flow through typical means.
  • Payment: Securely collect funds directly in the Flow. (Must have an active Nucleus Giving account to utilize this step. See below for more details.)
  • Date & Time: Ask for dates & times. This is typically helpful when registering for an event of some kind.
  • Additional Contact: Ask for other people's information. This would be people outside of the Smart Contact's details, such as a spouse, children, or any other person who you need information about, while the Flow remains only linked to the Smart Contact person.

Take Payments & Registrations

Ever create a form online for an event, a small group, a VBS/camp, or anything else that requires payment, that you just wish you could also take in online payments for - all within the same form? Well now you can!

One exciting step that you can add to any Flow is the Payment Step. This step allows you to take in online transactions within the same Flow, creating an easy, all-in-one process for someone to fill out their information and make their payment in the same place.

The Payment Step also provides options (should you choose to enable them) that can allow people to select that they will pay by cash or check (as an IOU), so as to not bar people without a credit card or bank account from being able to submit their information and complete the Flow.

Admins can then easily check off in their submission when payment has actually been received.

Note: Payments in Nucleus Flows is powered by Nucleus Giving, and it uses the same processing account that is created when you sign up for Nucleus Giving. As such, you are required to have an active Nucleus Giving subscription alongside Nucleus Flows in order to utilize the Payment Step.

For more information about the Payment Step specifically, click here.

Take Advantage Of Advanced Features

Flows don't need to be complicated. In fact, the less complicated you make your Flows, the greater the completion rate for that Flow!

But sometimes it just makes sense to add a bit more complexity based on the type of information you need to receive from people. For those specific instances, feel free to explore the various advanced features you can use on any Flow you create.

Basic Conditional Logic

While we advise that in most cases, every step in a Flow should be purposeful and necessary to have, sometimes a step will only apply to some people filling in their information. In those cases, it can be helpful to turn on a pre-step qualifying question. Based on their "yes" or "no" answer, Nucleus will either show that step, or will completely skip that step since it would not be relevant to that person.

Limits

Should you have a limit on how many items can be selected from a multiple choice step, you can set specific limits for the entire multiple choice step, for each individual item in the multiple choice step, or set a limit for both!

For instance, let's say you have tickets for an event that has multiple showtimes. You can set a Quantity Limit for how many tickets you can sell per showtime in the multiple choice step. Once that limit is reached, people will not be able to select that option.

The Schedule Limit can also be a super helpful way to ensure that people cannot fill out a Flow after a specific date/time. This prevents any last minute signups past a certain due date for that Flow to be submitted.

Once someone tries to access a Flow that is past the scheduled limit, they will see a message letting them know they're too late to submit that particular Flow. (You can also customize what this message says.)

Thank You Page

Every Flow comes equipped with a basic "Thank You" page. This page will automatically display a message, but if you'd like to really customize this page, you can!

You can choose to show everything down to nothing at all if you'd like, choosing between the headline, message, call-to-action (CTA), helper text, and a prompt to sign in to your My Nucleus account.

Follow-Up Message

For instances where providing additional details after someone completes a Flow, you can set up a follow-up message that will send to the email address entered in the Smart Contact step.

This is perfect for something like a "Connect Card" style Flow to ensure there is an immediate message sent to the person completing that Flow, providing them with additional information about your church, various ways to connect, etc.

Or if you have a Flow for signing up for an event, you could use the follow-up message to provide important details to remember such as the date of the event.

For tips on how to create a great follow-up sequence from a Flow, click here.

Guest Mode

While Flows by default will create a person record based on the name and email address entered in the Smart Contact step, or based on the email address added at the end of the Flow for that person to receive an emailed copy of their submission.

From time to time, you might create a Flow where it makes sense to not have a person record created in your Nucleus database (e.g. a "Contact Us" Flow). In such cases, you can enable Guest Mode to ensure that even though someone enters a name and email address in the Flow itself, a person record is not created for them.

For guidance on how to enable this on a Flow, click here.

Integrate With Planning Center (PCO)

Maintaining an up-to-date people database can be critical for following-up with new visitors - or just for making sure you have all the most recent contact information for regular attenders in your church.

Nucleus has developed a simple integration to ensure any contact information entered in a Smart Contact or Additional Contact step is automatically pushed to your PCO account, allowing you to use Nucleus Flows to receive submissions, while never missing any new people or updated information that needs to be added to your PCO account.

For guidance on how to enable the PCO integration with your Nucleus account, click here.

Manage Submissions & People Records

After people fill out the Flows you create, you can easily manage your submissions either by viewing all your submissions or by viewing submissions tied to each individual Flow.

Of course, if you need to download submission data to be used elsewhere, you can quickly do this while viewing an individual Flow's submissions.

Beyond that, you can also view and manage all the people records for anyone who submits a Flow, helping you keep track or - and even add notes to! - each person record.

What Next?

Now that you (hopefully!) have a good grasp of what Nucleus Flows is all about, it's time to learn the ins and outs of how to actually build a Flow, add it to your website, and start watching your Dashboard as submissions start pouring in.

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