Set Limits On A Flow

While the majority of your Flows will be active in perpetuity and have no limit on how many people can fill them out, you'll likely encounter a scenario where you'd like a Flow to open or close for submissions on certain dates. Or perhaps you'll have a limited number of items to select in a Flow, and you'd like the Flow to automatically close once the inventory is cleaned out.

Either way, you'll want to set a certain limit on your Flow to prevent people from completing a Flow before or after they should be able to, or from completing a Flow when your inventory has been depleted.

That's where limits come into play. Let's take a look at how to set up different types of limits on a Flow.

To begin, click the Nucleus logo in the top left corner and select Flows from the dropdown menu. Click here for a quick link.

Then select a specific Flow to Manage.

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

Set An Open/Close Date & Time For A Flow

For any Flow you create, you can establish a specific date/time that it becomes available for people to access and fill out, as well as when you can no longer access it.

This can be super helpful, for example, if you're promoting an upcoming event with a cutoff date for when people can sign up or purchase tickets for. If you have the Flow added to The Launcher and someone tries to access the Flow after that specific date/time, they will be unable to. (On the flip side, if you had an open date/time and the Flow was added to The Launcher, no one would be able to access the Flow even though the action itself is visible in The Launcher.)

To set up an open and/or close date/time, while managing a Flow, click on Create in the left sidebar, and then select Limits from the submenu.

From here, toggle the Schedule limit to the "on" position. Then click Manage.

You can choose one of three types of schedule limits for a Flow:

Open & Close Date/Time: Selecting this option will allow you to control both when a Flow will open in the future and also when it will close in the future.

Open Date/Time: Selecting this option will allow you to only control when a Flow will open in the future. Once it's been opened, you will have to manually save it back to drafts or add a Close Date/Time to it later down the road.

Close Date/Time: Selecting this option will allow you to only control when a Flow will close in the future. Once it's been closed, you will have to manually publish again or add an open Date/Time to it later down the road.

Whichever option you choose, you will be able to enter a specific date (feel free to manually enter it in or click on the calendar to open the date picker) as well as a specific time. (Don't forget to select am or pm!)

Once you're done, scroll down and click Save Changes.

Now, don't forget, this only means that you can leave this page of your Dashboard and your changes will be saved. But those changes are not actually live. If you'd like to set your new schedule limit live, you'll also need to click Publish Changes in the top right.

If your Flow is set to open in the future, anyone with a direct link to the Flow or anyone who tries to access the Flow via The Launcher will see the the following status page:

If your Flow is now closed, anyone with a direct link to the Flow or anyone who tries to access the Flow via The Launcher will see the the following status page:

Click here to learn how to customize these (or any other) status pages.

Establish Quantity Limits For A Flow

Rather than scheduling your Flow to close on a specific date/time, you can set a Flow to close once the inventory connected with a Multiple Choice Step has run out.

You can set specific quantity limits for each Multiple Choice Step you have in a Flow.

Adding a quantity limit to a multiple choice step is perfect for event sign-ups (where you might have a limit of how many tickets or seats are available), or for sales (where you might have a limit of how many t-shirts or other merchandise are available for purchase).

Setting quantity limits like this ensures you don't have more people coming than you can handle or less merchandise than has been paid for, and prevents you from disappointing people who submit the Flow after the quantity has been depleted.

There are quite a number of options to consider when setting up a quantity limit, so let's get into it.

Note: Setting up quantity limits builds on the knowledge of creating a Multiple Choice Step. Feel free to review the options pertaining to that here.

To set up an open and/or close date/time, while managing a Flow, click on Create in the left sidebar, and then select Limits from the submenu.

From here, toggle the Item Quantity limit to the "on" position. Then click Manage.

Here, you can choose which Multiple Choice Step you want to set quantity limits on. (If you don't have any Multiple Choice Step added to your Flow, you won't see any options here.)

Below, you can now set a quantity limits on some or every item in your Multiple Choice Step. (You can also easily go back and edit the step if you need to adjust the choices currently listed.)

If a limit on a particular item has been reached but not for other items, this is what it will look like:

Below this, you can set a total limit of how many items can be selected for the entire Multiple Choice Step, regardless if there are technically more items that can be selected for any particular item.

For example, you might set Item 1 with a limit of 50, Item 2 with a limit of 100, and Item 3 with a limit of 50. While that's a total of 200, you could set a cap on the entire Multiple Choice Step so that if a total of 150 items have been selected, even though there are technically still 50 more items available, if the cap has been reached, the Flow will be closed.

Going back to the actual Multiple Choice Step, if you've chosen the option to allow people to select more than one item from the list...

You will also see the option to set a cap of how many items can be selected per submission. This can help prevent people from monopolizing on all the selections in one submission.

If someone reaches the max limit per submission, they will see this in the Flow.

Below this, you can choose whether you want a single limit, or a limit that resets each week. (Choosing to reset each week can be helpful if you have a recurring service or event where there are only so many seats available.)

If you choose to reset weekly, choose the day of the week and enter a time (including the proper am or pm).

Lastly, you can choose the behavior of the Flow once the limit has been reached for this particular Multiple Choice Step. (If you've chosen to set quantity limits for more than this Multiple Choice Step, you will see all the same settings below for those other steps.)

By default, if your Multiple Choice Step is set to required, and you've set a quantity limit for every item in this step, the entire Flow will automatically close when the quantity limit is reached. At this point, if someone tries to access this Flow, they will see the Closed Status Page. (Click here to learn more about status pages.)

But if you'd like the Flow to remain open even after the quantity limit is reached, toggle this option on. Now, when people access this Flow, they will be able to fill out the Flow as normal, but they will skip this particular Multiple Choice Step.

Once you're done, scroll down and click Save Changes.

Note: Now, don't forget, this only means that you can leave this page of your Dashboard and your changes will be saved. But those changes are not actually live. If you'd like to set your new schedule limit live, you'll also need to click Publish Changes in the top right.

Manage Quantity Limits For A Flow

Once you have quantity limits set on a Flow, you can check on the status of them in the Results of your Flow.

While managing your Flow, click Results in the left sidebar and then click Counts in the submenu.

Here, you can see each Multiple Choice Step that has a limit set on it. You can see any limit set on a specific item along with how many of that item has already been selected and submitted via a Flow.

If you have a cap on the total amount of items that can be selected, you can also see that below, along with how many items total have been selected so far.

If you're working with a fairly active Flow, you can click Check for new to see if any new submissions have come through that would also effectively change the numbers you're seeing here.

While there is no button to completely reset your quantity limits, when you delete a submissions associated with this Flow, your numbers here will reflect that once you click Check for new. This is super helpful for instances where people initially sign up for something and then realize later that they can't attend. If you delete their submission, then whatever items they had selected for themselves will be placed back in the Multiple Choice Step for someone else to select.

Note: This also means that you can fill out test submissions to see how the system works, and then delete your test submissions to "reset" the counts before allowing real submissions to come through.

If you adjust any quantity limits after submissions have already come through, and then click Check for new, you'll also see this reflected in your numbers here.

Customize A Flow's Status Pages

Whenever adjusting any sort of limit on a Flow, it's best to look at your status pages. While Nucleus provides standard messaging for any status pages, you might want to customize the messaging to something more specific to that Flow.

There are 5 different status pages you can customize, though the two specifically associated to limits are:

Coming Soon - This Flow has been published, but has an open time/date set in the future

Closed - This Flow has reached a close date/time or submission count

We have an entire visual guide with instructions on how to customize a Flow's status page. Click here to view that.

What Next?

Setting limits - especially quantity limits - is one of the more advanced ways to customize your Flow. So if you're interested in setting limits, chances are that you're curious about customizing your Flow to the max. Check out any of these guides below to help you on that journey:

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