Exporting
File → Export KNIME Workflow produces a .knwf file. The option to reset before export is worth using: it strips cached data, making the file far smaller and avoiding sending data you did not mean to send.
Workflow groups export as .knar archives.
KNIME Hub
Public and private spaces for sharing workflows and components. The public Hub is also where you find community nodes and example workflows — searching it for a problem you are stuck on is often faster than building from scratch.
Running unattended
| Option | Notes |
|---|---|
| KNIME Business Hub | Commercial; scheduling, versioning, REST endpoints |
| Batch executor | Command line, driveable from any scheduler |
| Manual | Someone presses Execute |
The batch executor is the free route:
knime -nosplash -application org.knime.product.KNIME_BATCH_APPLICATION \
-workflowDir="/path/to/workflow" -resetDriven by cron or Task Scheduler, that covers most scheduling needs without the commercial product.
Making a workflow portable
Use the relative-to options in file readers — relative to the workflow, or to the workflow data area — rather than C:\Users\yourname\.
Better still, drive paths with flow variables so they can be set at run time without editing nodes.
Flow variables
Flow variables pass values between nodes — a file path, a date, a threshold. The Table Row to Variable and String Configuration nodes create them.
They are what turns a workflow that processes one specific file into one that processes whatever it is given, which is the difference between a script and a tool.