Water on the shelves before the heat arrives
Khalid runs supply for a supermarket chain with forty stores across Dubai. Summer is his hardest season.
Listen to the story:
The challenge
When a heatwave hits, water, ice and cold drinks fly off the shelves in hours. Store managers phone in their orders too late, and the trucks are already out. Last August, nine stores ran out of water on the hottest weekend of the year.
How the flow works
With xMap Flows, Khalid built Shelf. Shelf is an AI employee: a flow of 7 blocks.
Every day at five in the morning,
Every day at 5 am (Schedule)
Shelf reads the forty stores,
Our 40 stores (My data)
checks the forecast at each one five days ahead,
Each store, 5 days ahead (Weather forecast)
keeps the stores facing forty-five degrees or more,
45°C or hotter (Filter)
works out the extra water, ice and cold drinks each one needs,
Extra water and ice (Calculated field)
adds them to the restock sheet,
Restock orders (Google Sheets)
and tells every store manager in Teams.
Store managers (Microsoft Teams)
What it solves
- Orders phoned in late: solved by Schedule and Weather forecast
- Trucks already out: solved by Calculated field and Google Sheets
- 9 stores out of water: solved by Filter and Microsoft Teams
The result
On Sunday, Shelf sees forty-seven degrees coming on Thursday for the stores inland. Twenty-two stores get extra stock on Tuesday’s trucks, two days early. That Thursday, not one water shelf goes empty.
The heat still comes to Dubai. Khalid’s shelves are just ready first.
An illustrative scenario: the figures are modelled to show what the flow produces, not a customer's results.
The flow, block by block
- 1
- 2
Our 40 stores
Brings in a table you uploaded or a list you saved on the My data page: your stores, customers, target accounts or sites.
- 3
Each store, 5 days ahead
The weather forecast (Open-Meteo, from national weather services) for up to 16 days: temperature, rain, wind and UV.
- 4
- 5
Extra water and ice
Adds fields worked out from the others: a number, a text or a yes/no.
- 6
- 7
Templates to build it
Ready-made flows with the same blocks. Open one, change the city and the kind of place, and run it.
- Week ahead at my solar and wind sitesThe week ahead at every solar and wind site, with the best days for maintenance.
- Irrigation plan for my fields, every morningAn irrigation plan for each field from the week's heat and rain.
- High UV days: advice for my clinics' patientsOn high UV days, a short sun safety tip for each clinic's patients.
- Heat stop for outdoor work, every hourA WhatsApp heat stop to supervisors when a site reaches 45 degrees.
- Wind alert for crane liftsA Slack alert to stop crane lifts when strong wind is forecast.
- Frost warning for my farmsA WhatsApp frost warning to farm managers when nights get cold.
Industries
Learn how it works
- Data enrichmentAdding details to records you already have.
- How to score candidate store sitesCompare sites on residents, competitors and neighbours, with an AI score and a reason.
- How to build a WhatsApp assistant that answers about placesCustomers ask on WhatsApp; an AI agent searches and replies.
- Weather forecastUp to 16 days for each place or city.
- Your own tables and lists (My data)Upload a CSV, save lists of results, and use them in flows.
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Build this flow on your own city
Run a live search on the home page without an account, or let Ask xMap build the flow from one sentence.