The above rule flow specifies that the rules in the group "Check Order" must be executed before the rules in the group "Process Order". This means that first only rules which are marked as having a ruleflow-group of "Check Order" will be considered, and then, only if there aren't any more of those, the rules of "Process Order". That's about it. You could achieve similar results with either using salience, but this is harder to maintain and makes the time-relationship implicit in the rules, or Agenda groups. However, using a ruleflow makes the order of processing explicit, in a layer on top of the rule structure, so that managing more complex situations becomes much easier.
In practice, if you are using ruleflow, you will most likely be doing more than setting a simple sequence of groups to progress though. You'll use Split and Join nodes for modeling branches of processing, and define the flows of control by connections, from the Start to ruleflow groups, to Splits and then on to more groups, Joins, and so on. All this is done in a grphic editor.
The above flow is a more complex example, representing the rule flow for processing an insurance claim. Initially the claim data validation rules are processed, checking for data integrity, consistency and completeness. Next, in a Split node, there is a decision based on a condition based on the value ofthe claim. Processing will either move on to an "auto-settlement" group, or to another Split node, which checks whether there was a fatality in the incident. If so, it determines whether the "regular" of fatality specific rules should take effect, with more processing to follow. Based on a few conditions, many different control flows are possible. Note that all the rules can be in one package, with the control flow definition being separated from the actual rules.
To edit Split nodes you click on the node, which will show you a properties panel as shown above. You then have to choose the type: AND, OR, and XOR. If you choose OR, then any of the "outputs" of the split can happen, so that processing can proceed, in parallel, along two or more paths. If you chose XOR, then only one path is chosen.
If you choose OR or XOR, the "Constraints" row will have a square button on the right hand side. Clickin on this button opens the Constraint editor, where you set the conditions deciding which outgoing path to follow.
Choose the output path you want to set the constraints for (e.g. Autosettlement), and then you should see the following constraint editor:
This is a text editor where the constraints - which are like the condition part of a rule - are entered. These constraints operate on facts in the working memory. In the above example, there is a check for claims with a value of less than 250. Should this condition be true, then the associated path will be followed.