Pull Requests

Flowable Design allows you to create pull requests (or merge requests on GitLab) directly from the Git panel. This enables code review workflows for model changes without leaving the Design environment.

How It Works

A pull request created from Design is built from your local changes, not from commits you have already pushed. When you create the pull request, Design branches off the target branch, writes your selected local changes onto that new branch, commits and pushes it, and then opens the pull request against the target branch.

This has one important consequence for the order of your steps:

caution

Create the pull request instead of committing and pushing, not after it. The Open PR option is only offered while the app still has uncommitted local changes. Once you have committed and pushed, there are no local changes left to put into a pull request, and the option is no longer shown.

If you have already pushed your changes, open the pull request directly in GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket — your branch and its commits are already on the remote.

Prerequisites

• The app has uncommitted local changes.
• The repository has at least one branch besides the current one to use as the target branch.
• Your user has the Push to Git permission on the app.

Creating a Pull Request

To create a pull request:

1. Open the Git panel on the app details page and stay on the Overview tab.
2. Under the sync status, click Open PR next to Ready for review?.
3. On the Select models step, choose the target branch that you want to merge into (e.g., main).
4. Review the list of changed models and select the ones to include in the pull request. If any model conflicts with the target branch, resolve the conflict here — a pull request cannot be created while conflicts are unresolved.
5. Click Next.
6. On the Pull request details step, enter a title, an optional description (Markdown is supported, with a preview tab), and an optional commit message.
7. Click Create pull request to submit it to the Git hosting platform.

note

The dialog also offers Reviewers, Labels, Mark as draft, Auto-merge when approved, and Delete branch after merge. These are not yet applied to the created pull request — set them on the pull request in your Git provider after it has been created.

After Creating the PR

Design creates a dedicated branch for the pull request (named pr/<target-branch>-<timestamp>) containing the models you selected, and opens the pull request from that branch into the target branch. Your current working branch is left untouched.

Once the pull request is created, it exists on the Git hosting platform (GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket). From there:

• Team members can review the changes through the hosting platform's PR interface.
• CI/CD pipelines can be triggered on the PR.
• The PR can be merged through the hosting platform's merge controls.
• After merging, switch to the target branch in Design and pull to get the merged changes.

info

Pull request review and merging happen on the Git hosting platform, not within Flowable Design. Design creates the PR, but the review and merge workflow follows your team's standard Git practices.

Alternative: Pushing to a Branch First

If you prefer to push your models before requesting a review, use Create Branch in the Git panel to push them to a new branch, and then open the pull request in your Git provider. This is also the way to raise a pull request for changes that have already been committed.

Provider Support

Pull request creation is supported for the following provider types:

Provider	PR Type
GitHub	Pull Request
GitLab	Merge Request
Bitbucket	Pull Request

If the configured provider cannot create the pull request automatically, Design still pushes the branch and tells you to create the pull request manually.