Procedure flowcharts

Role: Compliance manager A flowchart is a drawing of a procedure, inside the text of a policy, a procedure or a standard. It is therefore versioned with the text, enters the fingerprint of the approved version, and cannot change after approval unless the text changes too. It is added from the section editor (Write a policy by sections).

Screenshot to come

What the drawing shows#

The drawing reads from top to bottom. Four kinds of element:

A step or a decision can carry a responsible role ("Security officer"), shown under the text. It is a role, never a person's name. An exit may go back to an earlier step: that is a loop. Meaning never depends on colour alone: shape and words give the type. The drawing follows Jira's light or dark theme.

A policy's drawer draws each flowchart of the text, with the text form under the drawing ("The flowchart as steps"): the same procedure as a numbered list, in which decisions say which step each answer leads to. That list is what a screen reader reads and, if the drawing could not be made, what a Word or PDF file keeps.

Draw a flowchart#

1. In a policy's editor, open the section you want and choose "Add a flowchart". A start, a step and an end, already linked, appear.
2. For each element, fill in the Type, the Text (120 characters at most), the Responsible role (80 at most) and what follows: "Then" for a start or a step; "Exit 1" and "Exit 2" for a decision, each with its Answer (40 characters at most) and its destination ("Leads to").
3. "Add after" inserts an element; the move up, move down and delete buttons move or remove them. Deleting a step links what led to it to what followed it; deleting a decision leaves its exits with no destination, to be chosen again. Moving up or down swaps two neighbouring steps of a straight run; the button is disabled in front of a start, an end or a decision.
4. The preview is redrawn at each keystroke. Under "To fix before saving", the editor lists what prevents saving. A flowchart has 60 elements at most; the flowchart's title is optional (120 characters at most) and names the drawing for a screen reader.
5. Save the policy. As long as a flowchart has a point to fix, saving is refused ("A flowchart has points to fix: fix them before saving").

The preview offers "Download as SVG", which saves the drawing as an image file.

Everything works from the keyboard: these are ordinary fields and buttons.

What the editor refuses#

A single start; at least one end; one exit for the start and for a step, two for a decision (with different answers), none for an end; no element outside a path from the start, no element without a path to an end; no two identical exits; no element leading to itself; no element without text.

Let the assistant suggest a flowchart#

Edition: Advanced In the section, "Suggest a flowchart" asks the assistant to draw the procedure the section's text describes. It starts from the section's title and text: it adds no step, delay or tool that the text does not give.

• It asks for 12 elements at most, with one start, at least one end, and decisions with two exits whose answers are written.
• It can give a step only the roles the policy names: those listed in its sections whose title speaks of roles or responsibilities (twelve at most). A "role" that is really a sentence is dropped; the step stays, with no role. Addresses, links and account identifiers are removed from the texts.
• The answer must pass the same check as the editor (start, ends, exits, paths). An answer that does not is never shown.
• You see the proposed drawing, with its text form, the mention "Suggested by the assistant" and "Generated by AI". "Insert" adds it at the end of the section as an ordinary flowchart, which you then edit in the editor. "Ignore" changes nothing.
• If the model does not answer or answers badly, you get a standard answer: a plain chain, from start to end, through the steps the text lists (its lines, or its sentences when it has one line only; 23 at most). Nothing is guessed.

What goes to the model is in the assistant page: the section's title and text, the role names and the policy's language.

The procedure templates#

The two procedure templates (security incident handling; access request and removal) already contain a flowchart: a chain that goes from start to end through the template's steps. It is edited like any other.

Known limits#

• A flowchart that can no longer be read (damaged block) is kept as it is, with the message "This flowchart cannot be read. It is kept as it is; delete it to draw it again."
• The drawing breaks texts at word boundaries using an estimated character width: a very wide text may overflow its box a little. The text form always carries the whole text.
• Two loops leaving the same point overlap at the start.
• A loop comes back through a lane to the right of the drawing.