Guided flows

A guided flow is a structured wizard inside the Henry panel. Where free-form chat is open-ended, a flow has a fixed shape — a sequence of selection, editing, and confirmation steps that walk you through a specific multi-step task and produce a known output.

Flows exist because some tasks have a known structure, and walking through that structure deliberately is faster and more reliable than reinventing it in chat every time. Drafting an observation, prepping a 1:1, writing a quarterly summary, and submitting 360 feedback all follow recognizable patterns. A flow encodes the pattern so you do not have to.

This article covers what a flow is, the available flows and what each one produces, how flows persist across sessions, the difference between canceling and completing, and how completed flows appear in your chat history.

Plan availability: Henry Agent is available on the Agentic plan. Team plan customers can upgrade in Settings → Billing.

What a flow is

A guided flow runs inside the Henry panel as a takeover view — it temporarily replaces the chat interface with a focused step-by-step UI. You can exit a flow at any time and return to chat, and you can re-open the flow later to pick up where you left off.

Each flow is composed of steps. The shape varies by flow but the common pattern is:

1. Selection step — pick the person, time range, or scope the flow applies to.
2. Context step — answer a few short questions or provide additional context Henry needs.
3. Editor step — review and edit the draft Henry produced. This is where most of your time is spent.
4. Confirmation step — final review of what will be saved, with the option to go back, save, or discard.

Some flows have additional steps for selecting attributes, picking peers, or choosing a template. The general rhythm — select, provide context, review the draft, confirm — holds across all of them.

Flows always end with an explicit confirmation. Henry does not save anything to your workspace without that final step. If you abandon a flow before confirming, nothing is written to the system of record.

Starting a flow

There are two ways to start a flow.

From a button in the app

Most pages that correspond to a flow have an entry point — for example, the observations page has a "Draft with Henry" button that opens the create-observation flow with the current employee pre-selected.

Starting from the app prefills as much context as possible. If you click "Draft with Henry" from Marcus's profile, the flow opens with Marcus already selected and you skip straight to the context step.

From the Henry panel

You can also start a flow by asking Henry. Phrases like "draft an observation," "help me prep for my 1:1 with Priya," "write a quarterly summary for Sara," or "I want to add a new employee" will prompt Henry to offer the relevant flow. Accepting the offer opens the flow inside the panel.

If your prompt is ambiguous — "help me with feedback" could mean drafting an observation, submitting a 360 response, or writing a summary — Henry will ask which flow you want before starting one.

The available flows

There are six guided flows. Each is described below with who it is for, the typical step shape, and what it produces.

create-observation

Who it is for: Managers, peers, and direct reports who want to capture an observation in a structured form.

Step shape:

1. Select the person the observation is about (skipped if pre-selected).
2. Provide the raw context — what happened, what you noticed, what was the impact. A few sentences is enough.
3. Edit Henry's draft, which includes a structured note (strength, growth area, or both), suggested attribute tags, and an optional recommended action.
4. Confirm and save.

What it produces: A new observation in the system of record, attached to the selected employee, visible to anyone with permission to see observations about that person.

This is the most-used flow. The value is mostly in step 2 to step 3 — turning a few raw sentences into a clean, structured note with the right attribute tags. You can ignore the suggestions Henry makes for tags or recommended actions if they do not fit; the flow does not enforce them.

start-conversation

Who it is for: Managers prepping for a 1:1 with a direct report.

Step shape:

1. Select the report and the upcoming meeting (or create a new conversation).
2. Optionally add focus areas — topics you want to cover, follow-ups from last time, things you have been meaning to bring up.
3. Edit Henry's draft agenda, which pulls from recent observations, the previous meeting's notes, and any open follow-ups.
4. Confirm and save the agenda to the conversation.

What it produces: A draft 1:1 agenda saved to the relevant conversation. The employee can see the agenda before the meeting, just as if you had typed it yourself.

This flow is most useful when you have not had time to prep and the meeting is in 20 minutes. Henry's draft is rarely the final agenda, but it is a much better starting point than a blank text box.

start-summary

Who it is for: Managers writing a quarterly, half-yearly, or cycle summary for a direct report.

Step shape:

1. Select the employee and the time range.
2. Optionally select which competencies or attributes to focus on.
3. Optionally pick which inputs to include — observations only, or observations plus 360 feedback plus objective progress.
4. Edit Henry's draft summary. The draft has the standard summary structure: overview, strengths, growth areas, key observations, and recommended development actions.
5. Confirm and save.

What it produces: A draft summary attached to the employee for the selected period. The summary is in your normal summary surface, where you can continue to edit it, share it for review, and submit it as part of a cycle.

Summaries are the highest-stakes thing Henry drafts. The flow is deliberately slower than create-observation — there are more steps and more configuration — because the inputs and the structure matter. Treat the draft as a starting point and spend real time on the editor step.

start-team-summary

Who it is for: Managers (and admins) who want a roll-up of themes across an entire team.

Step shape:

1. Select the team or sub-team.
2. Select the time range.
3. Optionally choose dimensions to surface (e.g., "scoping," "stakeholder management," "technical depth").
4. Edit Henry's draft, which aggregates themes across the team — what is broadly working, common growth areas, distribution of strengths, calibration drift signals.
5. Confirm and save.

What it produces: A team-level summary you can share with your skip-level, your peers, or use as input to a calibration meeting.

This flow is most useful before calibration cycles or as part of a regular cadence (monthly or quarterly). Henry does not produce ratings or recommendations — it surfaces patterns from the underlying observations and lets you draw the conclusions.

submit-360-feedback

Who it is for: Anyone — employee, peer, or manager — invited to give 360 feedback on someone.

Step shape:

1. Confirm the recipient and the prompts you have been asked to respond to.
2. For each prompt, provide raw context — examples, observations, your honest take.
3. Edit Henry's draft, which structures your input into a useful response (specific, behavioral, balanced).
4. Confirm and submit.

What it produces: A 360 response submitted on behalf of the giver. The response goes through whatever review or anonymization rules your organization has configured.

This flow exists because 360 feedback is hard to write well. Most people either over-share (a wandering monologue) or under-share (a one-line "she's great"). The flow nudges you toward useful, behavioral, specific responses without putting words in your mouth.

add-employee

Who it is for: Org admins adding a new employee to the workspace.

Step shape:

1. Provide the basics — name, email, role, manager, start date.
2. Optionally provide additional context — team, location, custom fields your org has configured.
3. Optionally configure invite behavior — send the invite immediately or stage it for later.
4. Confirm.

What it produces: A new employee record in the workspace, with the invite sent or staged based on your selection.

This is an admin-only flow. The same task can always be performed through the admin UI; the flow exists so admins can add a new hire without leaving Henry, particularly in conversations where the new hire was the topic ("Sara just signed; can you add her?").

Persistence — leaving and returning

Flows persist across sessions. If you start a flow, fill out three steps, then close the panel and walk away, your draft is saved server-side. You can return hours later and the flow opens at the step you were on with everything you had entered intact.

Persistence covers:

• The selections you made in earlier steps.
• Any context you provided.
• The draft Henry produced in the editor step, including any edits you made.
• Where you were in the step sequence.

A few rules about persistence:

• Drafts persist for a bounded period, long enough to handle "I'll come back to this after lunch" or "I'll finish this tomorrow morning." If you abandon a flow for an extended time, the draft eventually expires.
• Persistence is per-session. If you start a flow in session A, then start a new session, the flow stays attached to session A. Returning to session A reopens the flow.
• Edits inside the editor step are saved as you type — there is no "save draft" button in the middle of a flow. Anything you typed is kept.

This means you can use Henry the way you would use a real assistant: hand over the task, leave, come back when you are ready to finish. You will not lose work.

Canceling vs. completing

Every flow ends with one of two outcomes.

Completing a flow

Completing means you reached the confirmation step and clicked save. At that point:

• The output (observation, summary, agenda, 360 response, etc.) is written to the system of record.
• The flow disappears from the active state and becomes a card in the chat history.
• Any side effects that the flow normally triggers (notifications, audit log entries) run as if you had performed the same action through the standard UI.

Completing a flow is the only way Henry creates or modifies records on your behalf. There is no auto-save and no autonomous commit.

Canceling a flow

Canceling means you exited the flow without confirming. You can cancel from any step using the cancel control. Canceling:

• Discards the draft.
• Cleans up any temporary records the flow may have created. (Some flows, like start-conversation, create a placeholder record at the start so the editor step has something to attach to. Canceling removes the placeholder.)
• Leaves no permanent record in your workspace.

Cancellation is final — there is no undo. If you cancel a flow you spent half an hour drafting, the draft is gone. For long drafts, leaving the flow open and returning later is safer than canceling.

If you simply close the panel without explicitly canceling, the flow is not canceled; it persists. You can return to it. Canceling is the deliberate "throw this away" action.

Completed flows in chat history

When you complete a flow, a card appears in the chat history of the session it ran in. The card summarizes what was produced — what kind of flow, who it was about, when it was completed, and a link to view the resulting record.

For example, after completing a start-summary flow for Sara in Q1, the chat history shows a card like:

Henry: Saved a Q1 summary for Sara Chen.
       View summary →

Clicking the link takes you to the summary in its normal surface, where you can continue to edit, share, or submit it.

The card is read-only — it is a record that the flow happened, not an interactive view of the underlying record. To continue working on the output, follow the link.

This makes chat history doubly useful: it is the conversational record of what you and Henry discussed, and it is also a log of the structured artifacts Henry helped you produce.

A note on AI-generated content

Everything Henry produces in a flow is a draft. The product treats it that way and so should you.

• The editor step exists for a reason. Read what Henry wrote. Edit it. Disagree with it where you disagree. The output is saved to your workspace under your name.
• If a draft is not useful, cancel and try again with different context. A weak input usually produces a weak draft; iterating on the prompt is faster than rewriting the output from scratch.
• Some flows produce content that another person will read (an agenda, a summary, a 360 response). That person is reading your words, not Henry's. Make sure the final draft is something you would have written.

The flow's job is to remove the structural and lookup overhead. The judgment is still yours.

Next steps

• Using the Henry panel covers the chat interface that hosts the flows.
• Knowledge base and retrieval explains the documents Henry can pull from when drafting.
• Henry analytics shows admins which flows are being used and how successfully.