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The first step in any transformation program is understanding how work actually happens — not how it’s supposed to happen. This guide walks you through using Fluency’s Work Explorer to build a complete, real-time map of your organization’s workflows, from initial onboarding to ongoing discovery.

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Before you begin

Make sure you have the following in place before starting:
  • A Fluency account. Contact your implementation team or log in at app.usefluency.com to confirm your credentials are active.
  • At least one team or department to scope your initial discovery. You don’t need your entire organization mapped from day one — starting with a single team gives you a focused, high-quality first view and lets you validate the process before expanding.

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Step 1: Log in and set up your workspace

1

Navigate to Fluency

Open your browser and go to app.usefluency.com.
2

Sign in with your enterprise credentials

Enter the email address and password associated with your Fluency account. If your organization uses SSO, select your identity provider from the login screen.
3

Configure your organization details

On first login, Fluency prompts you to confirm your organization name, industry, and team structure. Fill in these details accurately — Fluency uses them to contextualize workflow discovery and benchmark your results against relevant industry patterns.

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Step 2: Open Work Explorer

Select Work Explorer from the left sidebar. On first launch, you’ll see a table of discovered workflows that populates automatically as Fluency analyzes activity across your connected environment — no manual tagging or process mapping required. Each row in the table represents a distinct workflow type Fluency has identified. Columns show the workflow name, the team it belongs to, total run volume, average cycle time, and a bottleneck indicator. The table refreshes continuously as new activity is detected, so the data you see always reflects the current state of your organization’s work.

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Step 3: Filter by team or time period

Use the filter controls at the top of the Work Explorer table to focus your discovery on what matters most right now. You can filter by:
  • Team or department — narrow the view to a single group, such as Finance, Customer Success, or Engineering.
  • Date range — scope discovery to a specific period, such as the last 30 days or a previous quarter.
  • Workflow type — filter by category (e.g., approval workflows, onboarding sequences, data processing pipelines).
Combining filters gives you a precise slice of activity — for example, all approval workflows run by the Legal team in Q1. Save frequently used filter combinations as views for quick access later.

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Step 4: Explore a workflow map

Click any workflow row to open its detailed map. The map gives you a complete structural view of how that workflow actually executes:
  • Steps — every discrete action or stage in the workflow, laid out in sequence.
  • Decision points — branching logic where a workflow can take different paths depending on conditions or human choices.
  • Handoffs — the moments where work moves between people, teams, or systems.
  • System annotations — which tools and platforms are involved at each step (e.g., email, CRM, ERP, document management).
Below the map, the cycle time timeline shows how long each step typically takes, with a distribution curve that makes it easy to spot where time is lost. Hover over any step to see percentile breakdowns — you can immediately see whether a step that takes two hours on average occasionally takes two days.

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Step 5: Identify bottlenecks

Fluency automatically highlights bottlenecks directly on the workflow map — look for steps marked with a warning indicator. These are the points where cycle time is disproportionately long, where work frequently stalls, or where the deviation rate between standard and non-standard runs is highest. To investigate further:
  • Click a highlighted bottleneck to open a panel showing all affected workflow runs. You can see exactly which runs triggered the bottleneck flag and review the conditions that caused them.
  • Compare standard vs. deviating paths — use the path comparison toggle to overlay the typical execution sequence against the variant paths. This reveals whether a bottleneck is structural (it affects every run) or conditional (it only appears under specific circumstances).
Understanding the root cause of each bottleneck is what turns a workflow map into an actionable improvement plan.

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Step 6: Export or share findings

Once you’ve built a picture of your workflows, share it with the people who need to act on it:
  • Share a workflow map — click the Share button on any workflow map to generate a link. Recipients with Fluency access see the live map; you can also export a static snapshot as a PDF or image for stakeholders who don’t have accounts.
  • Generate a narrative summary with the Assistant — open the Assistant from the sidebar and ask it to summarize your findings in natural language. For example: “Summarize the top three bottlenecks in the Finance team’s workflows for a leadership presentation.” The Assistant produces a structured narrative you can paste directly into a slide deck or report.

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Tips for getting the most out of Work Explorer

Initial discovery typically completes within a few hours, depending on the volume of historical activity Fluency has access to analyze. After that, discovery is continuous — Fluency monitors activity in real time and updates the workflow table automatically. You don’t need to re-run or manually trigger a refresh.
Yes. The filter controls let you scope the Work Explorer view by team, system, date range, or workflow type. You can also create saved views for specific combinations you return to frequently. If you want to suppress a workflow permanently — for example, a low-signal automated process that creates noise — use the hide option to remove it from your default view without deleting the underlying data.
If a workflow isn’t appearing, check that the relevant team’s activity falls within your selected time range and that the workflow has run often enough for Fluency to identify it as a distinct pattern. Some workflows only appear after accumulating a minimum number of runs. If you still don’t see it after adjusting the filters, contact your implementation team — they can verify that the relevant activity sources are connected.
Work Explorer updates continuously — there is no manual refresh required. Workflow data reflects activity as it happens, so the map you see today includes runs from earlier today. Historical data is preserved indefinitely, so you can always look back at earlier periods for comparison.

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Next step

Identify and Prioritize Automation Opportunities

Now that you have a clear picture of your workflows, use Fluency’s Opportunities module to surface the highest-value automation candidates and build a prioritized AI roadmap.