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Diamond Stone Platform: User Flows and the Gaps They Showed

Date: 2026-11-11. Revision 1. Status: draft for owner review. The diagrams are in docs/user-flows.html; open it in a browser. Companion to docs/JOURNEYS.md (how each person moves), docs/ROLES.md (each role's screens) and docs/INVENTORY.md (every screen).

The system's own side of these flows (what the platform does between the people: its parts, automation, outside services and schedules) is in docs/system-flows.html.

1. What was drawn

Six jobs that cross roles, each as a diagram with one row per person, read left to right:

Flow People Steps
Enquiry to cash Customer, sales, owner, purchasing, driver or carrier, accountant 23
Back-to-back order (added later the same day) Customer, sales, purchasing, owner, factory, driver or carrier, accountant 19
Buy to pay Purchasing, owner, warehouse, accountant 11
Problem to resolution Customer, sales or support, purchasing, owner, accountant 8
Month-end close Accountant, owner, auditor 12
Hire to pay Administrator or HR, employee, owner, accountant 11
Content to enquiry Marketing, owner, visitor, sales 9

Fourteen kinds of user, each with their own jobs as a chain: how they get in (a Halo ring, a link in a message, Scan, Add, Place or Search), then each screen in order. Owner, administrator, accountant, sales, purchasing and shipping, warehouse, driver, logistics company, HR and payroll, marketing, every employee, customer, auditor, website visitor. 59 jobs in all.

Every box is a screen. Its style shows whether the screen is drawn in the sketch, specified only, or was missing.

2. How the flows were checked

Each flow was walked step by step against five questions, from the principles already agreed:

  1. Is there a screen for this step? If a person must do something, there must be a place to do it.
  2. Does the step start by itself? The previous person's action should open this person's Halo ring (for a customer, a message and a count in the portal's line of words). Nobody should have to be told.
  3. Is it within reach? Two taps from Home for daily work (docs/JOURNEYS.md).
  4. Does the person see what they need to decide, as a picture or a figure, and one action?
  5. Is there a way back, a way to undo, and a state for when it fails or there is no signal?

3. What was missing

The flows had 200 steps. 57 of them pointed at a screen that did not exist in the sketch; most were steps where one person hands over to the next.

Where the flow broke Why it mattered Screen added
A salesperson meets a new customer mid-quote No way to add one without creating a duplicate New customer, with a duplicate warning
An order is confirmed The customer needs a proforma before paying Proforma
The owner has several things waiting Only one at a time was reachable, through the Halo Approvals list
Purchasing asks three suppliers Nowhere to compare the replies Compare prices
Stone arrives Nowhere to tick it in or record damage Goods receipt
An order is ready to ship Nowhere to choose own truck or a carrier Assign transport
The driver arrives Photo existed; signature and count did not Delivery proof
Money arrives The bank line could be matched but not applied across invoices Receipt
Suppliers are due Preparing and releasing a batch had no screen Payment run
A customer has a problem No way to report it; staff had the claim but not the case Report a problem, Case
A claim is accepted No way to reduce the invoice Credit note
Someone joins Adding a person and handing over the invitation Invite a person
An employee wants leave HR could approve, but nobody could ask Leave request
Pay day Preparing payroll, and the employee seeing their pay Payroll run, Payslip
Marketing changes a page Editing and the checks before publishing Page editor, Publish checks
Anyone looks for something Search was an icon with nothing behind it Search
Anyone scans something The camera had no result Scan result
Anyone missed an alert Alerts vanished from the lock screen Notifications
An administrator changes anything Settings was one line Settings
A list is empty, the phone has no signal, a page fails No screen for any of them Empty, Offline, Error
A visitor sends a form Nothing told them what happens next Thank you

All 26 are drawn in the sketch under "Added from the flow review". The store's four screens and the portal's quote, pay, documents, delivery and rating screens were added in the same pass (docs/STORE.md, docs/PORTAL.md).

4. What is still not drawn

34 steps point at screens that are specified in writing but not drawn. None blocks a flow from being understood, but each must be drawn before it is built.

Area Screens
Buying and delivery Ask for a price; inspection; loading; export documents; count; landed cost
Money Owed by us; stock value; salary file; payroll posting
People and control A person and their phones; one setting; connections; reconnect
Logistics company Assign driver; send invoice
Marketing Stone pictures and words; media; sources
Customer My cases
Auditor Requests and answers
Everyone Me; expense; driver's problem report

5. Weaknesses the flows showed that a screen does not fix

  1. Too many steps wait on the owner. In enquiry to cash the owner can be asked three times (discount, purchase order, and later the payment run). With limits set sensibly most orders should pass without the owner. Until limits are set, the owner approves everything, which will be slow in the first weeks.
  2. The customer is asked for five separate actions: approve the range, accept, pay, approve the layout (or the photographs of the actual pieces), confirm the site. Each is right, but the messages must make clear which one is waiting, and never ask for two at once.
  3. Inspection, now sorting and layout (docs/MATCHING.md section 6), is the step with the least design. It is where the customer's biggest fear (the stone will not match) is answered, and it is done one-handed in a yard. It needs to be drawn and tried on site before anything else in buying.
  4. Hand-overs depend on a signed delivery. If a driver has no signal or does not press "Delivered", invoicing waits. The offline queue covers the signal; a reminder to the shipping role covers the forgotten tap.
  5. Problem to resolution has the longest wait for the customer and passes through four people. The case needs one named owner throughout and a reply promise shown to the customer.
  6. A new employee's first minute (invitation, number, code, passkey) has not been tried on the real phones, and the passkey step depends on how each phone is set up.

6. How to use the diagrams