Key concepts

Let's get into the details of the Workflow Automation main terms before creating our first flow.

Trigger

A trigger is an event that causes an action, e.g. an incoming call or a Salesforce field update.

Action

An action, e.g. a new chat or an SMS sent is defined and caused by a trigger.

App

Apps are the third-party services you can use with Workflow Automation, like e.g. Twitter, Github or Slack. Take a look at the complete list of available apps here.

Workflow Automation aims to connect those apps to help you build workflows. Basically whenever you work with Workflow Automation, you will be using apps.

TIP

You can request a new integration here. We will collect all the requests and prioritize the most requested ones.

Connection

To be able to use an app, you need to establish a connection. A connection passes the credentials of the specified service, like consumer key, consumer secret, etc. to allow Workflow Automation to connect third-party apps on your behalf.

When clicking Add connection and choosing an app, you'll automatically be prompted to fill out the required fields for the connection.

Here's our guide to connecting apps.

NOTE

You may also add multiple connections should you have more than one account for the same app.

Flow

A flow is the most crucial part of Workflow Automation. In a flow you may design your business workflow by connecting multiple steps. So, for example, we could define a flow that:

• Searches Tweets for the "Workflow Automation" keyword.
• Sends a message to a specified Slack channel which posts those extracted Tweets.

TIP

Flows have names. It has proven to be the most successful approach organizing your flows by giving them meaningful names describing their functionalities, e.g. "Check Twitter for the keyword Workflow Automation and post it to a Slack channel".

Step

Steps are the individual items in the flow. In our example, searching Tweets and sending a message to a Slack channel are both steps in our flow.

Steps basically consist of trigger and action. Trigger steps start any flow you would like to build with Workflow Automation, like e.g. "search Tweets". Action steps define what you would like to do with the incoming data, like "sending a message to a Slack channel" in our example.

NOTE

Flows may consist of more than two steps. The first step of each flow should be the Trigger step, followed by Action steps.

Create your first flow

Setting up flows is easy. Here's a good example how to create your first flow.