Draw your own process map

3 min read Updated 2026-08-28 WindoorERP 19.0

What this does

Turns the shipped maps into your maps: your department names, your steps, your hand-offs — each box pointing at the article that explains it to your own people.

Before you start

You need the Process Map Editor group. System administrators have it already; ask yours if the Edit button is missing.
Decide whether you are editing the shipped map or drawing a new one. Editing a shipped map is fine — WindoorERP stops overwriting it the moment you change anything.

Steps

01
Open User Manual › Process Maps and select a map.
02
Click Edit. The inspector opens on the right and the toolbar gains its drawing tools.
03
Add a box with the + button, then drag it where it belongs. Boxes snap to a grid so a map stays tidy without fiddling.
04
Connect two boxes: hover the source box, drag the round blue handle that appears inside its edge, and drop on the target.
05
Group the boxes that are one thing: select one and press the group button, then drag the rectangle's title bar to move the whole set at once. Dropping a box inside a group joins it; deleting a group leaves its boxes exactly where they are.
06
Select a box and use the inspector to set its type, owner, lane and what it produces — one output per line.
07
Set Article on the box to the manual page that explains it. Readers then click the box and read the procedure.
08
Press Save. Ctrl+Z undoes, Delete removes the selection.

Getting a readable drawing

Use lanes for phases or departments, then Auto layout — it places boxes by their links and keeps each lane together.
A lane is a band across the whole drawing — use it for the department that owns a row. A group is a rectangle you draw around a handful of boxes that belong together; it travels with them and prints with them.
Keep a box title to a few words. What it produces belongs in Outputs, the detail in Summary.
Colour by meaning, not by taste: one colour per department reads instantly, twelve colours read as decoration.
Print puts the whole map on one page, turned to portrait or landscape to match its shape — useful on a wall next to the production board.

Important

Once you edit a map that shipped with WindoorERP it is marked Edited here and upgrades leave it alone — your drawing is never overwritten. If you want the vendor version back, open the map record and use Reset to shipped version; that discards your changes.

Common mistakes

Drawing every exception. A map that shows the normal route is read; a map that shows all forty variations is not.
Boxes with no owner. If nobody is named, the step is where work stops.
Leaving the map in Draft. Readers only see published maps.

Was this article helpful?

Running a window or door factory?

Ask for a demo