Annotations
Right-click the canvas → New Workflow Annotation for a coloured box with a heading behind a group of nodes. Use them as section headers: Load and clean, Join to product master, Outputs.
Each node also has an editable label under it. Rename Row Filter to Exclude test accounts — what the node is is already visible from its icon; what it is for is not.
Metanodes
Select several nodes → right-click → Collapse into Metanode. They become one node you can open like a folder.
A workflow of eighty nodes becomes eight readable blocks. Metanodes are purely organisational — they behave exactly as the nodes inside them would.
Components
A component looks similar but is genuinely different: it has its own scope, can expose configuration dialogs, and can be shared and reused across workflows.
Use a metanode to tidy up, and a component when you want reusable, parameterised logic — a standard cleaning routine your team applies to every file, for instance.
Components can be published to a KNIME Hub space so others use the same version rather than copying it.
Layout
Keep the flow left to right, avoid crossing connections, and align nodes. Ctrl+Shift+L auto-layouts a selection.
It matters more here than in code-based tools, because the picture is the documentation.
Workflow metadata
The Description panel holds a workflow description, author and tags. Fill it in — on KNIME Hub or a shared server, it is what tells someone what the workflow does before they open it.