Start from a template or build from scratch? How to choose for each job

Start from a template when your job is a common one and the data it needs is data xMap already has: new businesses in a city, competitors opening, companies hiring, road closures, weather at your sites. Build from scratch when the job starts from something only you have, such as your own list of sites or customers, or when it joins steps no template joins. If you find yourself changing more than two things in a template, describing the job to Ask xMap in a sentence is usually faster.

xMap Flows has 1,000 templates across 40 industries, and Ask xMap can build a flow from a plain description. Both end in the same kind of AI employee. This article helps you pick per job, with two examples on very different teams and the habits that waste time on either side.

What each route gives you

Both routes give a normal flow you can open and change at any time.

A template is only offered while every block it needs is switched on. If a block is switched off, its templates leave the gallery and Hire by themselves, so anything you see there can be run today.

Three questions that decide it

1. Does a template's name describe your job in your own words? Search the gallery with the words you would use, and read what each run gives. A close match means start there.
2. Does the job start from your own records? A list of your stores, your customers or your sites usually means a template that asks for your list, or building from scratch around a My data block.
3. How many changes would the template need? One or two (another city, another timetable, Slack instead of email) is a template with a sentence. Three or more structural changes (new steps, a different data source, a different output) is a fresh build.

Example one: a template that fits (made up)

Mikkel runs events at a conference venue in Copenhagen and wants to know about new offices opening nearby, because a new office often books its first all-hands somewhere close. He searches the gallery for new offices near my venue and finds a template for events teams that does exactly that. He presses Hire, answers two questions (his venue's address and how far to look) and changes nothing else. The template already sorts the offices, drops ones it has sent before and emails a short list each Monday.

Building that by hand would have meant choosing the data block, a distance, an ordering, the memory step and the email. The template got there in two answers, and it was tried on live data before he committed.

Example two: building from scratch (made up)

Valentina works for a water utility in Santiago. She wants an alert when heavy rain is forecast near any of her 60 pumping stations and a road incident is reported close to the same station, so crews can be sent early by a road that is open. No template joins her own station list with both rain and road incidents in that way.

She uploads the station list as a table in My data and writes to Ask xMap: for each pumping station in my table, check the rain forecast for the next two days and road incidents within 2 km, and email the crew lead the stations with both. It builds a flow with My data, Weather forecast, Traffic incidents, a Filter and an Email, tests it on sample data and says what is left to set. She checks the rain threshold, runs it once, and deploys it every six hours.

The middle path: hire, then change it first

Most jobs sit between the two examples. The Hire window has a Make it yours box at the top where one sentence changes the places, the kind of business, the timetable and where results go. If you need more than that, choose Change it first: the flow is made with your answers and opened in the editor, where Ask xMap can add a step, swap a block or tighten a rule before anything runs on a timetable.

Mistakes on both sides

• Picking a template for its title alone. Read what each run gives. Two templates with similar names can watch quite different things.
• Keeping the template's example city. Templates start on a well-known city. Answer the place question, or every result will be on the wrong continent.
• Stacking edits until nothing of the template is left. After the third structural change, start again from a description. It is quicker to read a flow built for your job than to untangle one built for another.
• Building from scratch what the gallery already has. Search first with your own words. A blank canvas is slower when a tested flow exists.
• Not testing a hand-built flow. Run a test (nothing is sent) and read what each block passes on before you deploy it.

Where the AI employee ends up

Whichever route you take, the result appears on the Flows page as an AI employee with a role worked out from its blocks, a patch and a timetable. It gets a thread in the Team inbox, writes a short note after each morning's run, and writes at once if a run fails. A template does not make it a lesser employee, and a hand-built one gets no special treatment: you judge both by what they find.