Processes

This page covers creating and editing processes, linking them, the process page with its diagram, reviews, and the history: comparing versions, viewing a process as it was on a date, and reverting.

Creating and editing a processCopy Anchor Link

Owners, admins and editors can create and change processes. Viewers see everything but don't get the editing buttons.

• New process: on the Landscape (or press Ctrl K and choose New process). A name is enough; you can pick a landscape group right away or later. The process starts as a draft and opens in the editor.
• Edit: on the process page, opens the editor for everything about the process: name, purpose, description, landscape group, home parent, owner, review interval, steps, links, ISO clauses, KPIs and risks. Each field saves as soon as you leave it, and a preview of the diagram updates as you work.
• Publish: makes the current version the official one. You're asked what changed and why; that note is what the History tab shows. A published process you've edited since shows Unpublished changes, and colleagues keep seeing the published version until you publish again.
• Approval: if your organization has approvers (Settings → Approvals, for example the process owner and then the Quality manager), a change is approved before it's published. Choose Ask for approval; each approver in turn sees it in their inbox and chooses Approve, or Send back… with a comment on what needs to change. When everyone has approved, Publish appears. Editing the process again starts the approvals over, because they're for the version they saw. The history shows who approved each published version.
• Retire (in the ⋯ menu): for a process that's no longer in use. It stays in the history, can't be changed while retired, and Restore brings it back.
• Owner: a person, or a role such as Quality manager or CEO. With a role, whoever holds it is responsible: the process's reviews and gaps go to their inbox, and when someone else takes over the role, they take over all of its processes at once. Choose who holds each role under Settings → Roles. Each published version records who was responsible then, so the history still shows it after the holder changes.
• Number: if your organization numbers its processes (P15, AP-01-02), give each its number next to the name in the editor. It shows in front of the name everywhere, lists sort by it (P2 before P10), and search and Claude find a process by its number. Two processes can't share a number.

If someone else changed the same process at the same moment, your change isn't saved and Steplane tells you, so nobody's work is overwritten. The page then shows the latest version.

Editing stepsCopy Anchor Link

In the editor, each step is a card. Add a step with the field at the bottom; reorder with the arrows and remove with the bin. For each step you can set:

• Kind: a task, a decision, or carried out by another process (pick which one; the diagram then links to it).
• Who does it: the role, which becomes the step's lane in the diagram.
• Systems, inputs (what the step takes in) and outputs (what it produces, such as documents or goods). Each shows as a chip; remove one with its ×.

Start typing in any of these and pick a name your organization already uses, or choose Add "…" to add a new one to the list. Enter picks the first match. Changes save straight away.

• People's time on it, and how many: a rough estimate of people's own time on the step, on average, from a few minutes to a day or more (see Rough estimates).
• Does a person need to decide?: whether someone should keep the decision, such as how the website should look, or whether it follows from what's already known, such as answering a question your documentation answers. Steps where a person decides can get help from AI, but are never suggested for automation. Claude guesses it; a guess shows as A guess until you confirm it.
• How it's done: by a person, by a person with AI help, or automated (AI or a system does it on its own). This is part of the process: changing it is published like any other change and shows in the history. Together they place the process on the maturity ladder.
• Then: what happens next. By default the next step follows; you can jump to another step or end the process instead.
• Branches (decisions only): one per outcome, each with a label such as "Yes" or "No" and the step it leads to, or the end of the process.

Rough estimatesCopy Anchor Link

Steplane can show which processes are worth improving first. It uses rough estimates, never time recording:

• How often it runs, in the editor under Placement and ownership, such as 40 per day. This is the one that decides the ranking.
• How much of people's own time each step takes, and how many take part, shown as context. It's the average over many runs, not how long the step takes from start to finish: a step that's usually ten minutes but sometimes two hours is "under an hour". Time a system or an AI spends doesn't count.
• What kind of tool each system is, under Settings → Systems: a business system such as the ERP, a spreadsheet, email or chat, or paper and phone.

Nobody has to fill these in. When you describe a process with Claude, it guesses them from what it knows and asks only when it matters, and placeholders from Suggest processes start with how often such a process typically runs. A guess shows as A guess with Confirm next to it; changing a value confirms it too.

Estimates aren't part of the process's content: changing one doesn't need publishing or approval, and it doesn't show in the history.

Links to other processesCopy Anchor Link

Below the steps, link the process to others:

• Uses: subprocesses it runs as part of its flow, for example a returns process that goods receipt starts.
• Hands off to: processes that take over when this one is done.

Type a process name. If no process has that name yet, Steplane creates a placeholder: a process with only a name, marked as a placeholder, so the link exists now and the gap shows up to be described later.

Receives from is the same link seen from the other side: it lists the processes that hand off to this one. To change it, edit the other process.

ISO clauses, KPIs and risksCopy Anchor Link

• ISO clauses: pick the standard, then the clause. For ISO 9001, search by number or by words, for example 8.4 or supplier, and pick from the list; Steplane shows each clause's title in plain language. For standards Steplane doesn't map clause by clause yet (ISO 14001, 27001, 45001 and NIS2), type the clause or control, for example A.5.1.
• KPIs: what you measure to know the process works, with a target and how it's measured.
• Risks and opportunities: what could go wrong or better, and how you handle it. ISO 9001 asks you to address both (clause 6.1).

What's still missingCopy Anchor Link

At the top of the editor, Still missing lists the gaps Steplane finds in the process, and updates as you work. Gaps never block publishing.

To fix (the process is incomplete):

• A step without a role (who does it?)
• A process without an owner, or owned by a role that nobody holds
• A step or link pointing at a retired process, or at one that no longer exists

Check (often fine, but worth a look):

• An output that no step in any process takes as an input (fine if it goes to a customer or supplier)
• A link to a placeholder that isn't described yet
• The process is itself a placeholder
• A task that names no system: where is it done or written down? A spreadsheet, email or paper counts too.
• An input that no step produces: where does it come from? If it arrives by email or from a customer, add the step that receives it.

The last two are questions for describing the process well; they show here and to your AI assistant, not in the inbox. The answers show where work moves between spreadsheets, email and your systems, which is often the first thing worth automating.

Your AI assistant runs the same checks across the whole organization.

The process pageCopy Anchor Link

Open any process to see:

• Where it belongs: the landscape group and parent processes above the name.
• Status, revision, owner and next review date under the name.
• A banner when a change project is preparing a new version, with a link to the project.
• About this process (beside the page, or below it on a phone): the owner, its Maturity: its rung on the maturity ladder and the next step up, how often it runs (see Rough estimates), its subprocesses (with + to add one), the processes it receives from, uses and hands off to, the systems it uses, the ISO clauses it covers, and the latest change with who made it and who approved it. Changes made with an AI assistant name the person behind them, for example "Anna Jensen via Claude, approved by Anna".

The Steps tab lists every step with the role responsible, its inputs and outputs, and the systems used. On a phone, a process opens on the Steps tab.

The Links tab shows how the process connects to others: what it receives from and hands off to, the subprocesses it uses, and which processes use it.

The History tab lists every published revision, newest first: the change note, who made it (and through which AI assistant, if any), who approved it, and when. See History and revert for what you can do with it.

The ISO coverage tab lists the ISO clauses the process is tagged with. For each clause Steplane maps, it says what the clause asks for in practice and what auditors usually ask to see, in its own words: never the standard's text. The titles follow the edition your organization works towards (Settings → Standards), or the newest one Steplane maps.

ReviewsCopy Anchor Link

ISO management systems expect processes to be checked regularly. Every published process has a next review date, shown at the top of its page, counted from its last publish or review. The interval comes from the organization's setting (every year unless an admin changes it in Settings), or from the process's own Review field in its editor. Draft and retired processes have no review date.

When the date has passed, the process shows Review due, also on the landscape, where you can filter for it. If the process is still right, someone who can edit processes chooses Record review and notes what was checked. The review is saved in the history, so an auditor can see when it was checked and by whom, and the next review is scheduled. If something needs to change, edit and publish instead; publishing also counts as a review. A process with unpublished edits can't be reviewed until they're published, so the review always covers the version people see.

History and revertCopy Anchor Link

Every publish, review, retire, restore and revert adds a revision with a full copy of the process, so any version can be shown exactly as it was. Drafts aren't revisions; only what was published counts. Each view has its own page address, so you can send a link to it.

• View: shows a revision as it was, with its diagram and every detail.
• As it was on: pick a date to see the version that was published that day, for audits or when looking into an incident. If the process was retired by then, the page says so.
• Compare: pick two revisions, or use Compare with previous. You get a list of what changed (details, steps, links, ISO clauses, KPIs, risks) and both diagrams, with added steps marked green, removed steps red with a dashed border, and changed steps amber.
• Revert to this version (owners, admins and editors): puts the process back as it was in that revision and publishes it as a new revision, with your reason as the note. Nothing in the history is deleted. Before you confirm, Steplane lists the linked processes that changed since that revision, so you can check they still fit. Unpublished edits are replaced.

DiagramsCopy Anchor Link

Each process has a diagram on its Diagram tab, drawn from the process itself, so it's never out of date. Lanes show who does each step; steps without a role share an "Unassigned" lane, and a process where no step has a role is drawn without lanes. Decisions show their branches, and a branch that ends the process leads to an End marker. Steps that are processes of their own, such as a shared subprocess or a handoff, have a double border: click one, or tab to it and press Enter, to open that process.

Each process has a direction everyone sees: Top to bottom, with one column per role, so longer processes continue down the page, or Left to right, which reads like a timeline. Some processes read better one way, so choose it once in the editor (Diagram), or switch above the diagram and choose Use for everyone. It applies straight away and isn't a change that needs publishing. Anyone can still switch for themselves above the diagram; that choice is part of the page address, so a link opens the same view. History and Claude draw the process the same way.