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Events

Learn about events in Actioner and how to use them in your apps.

Overview​

Events feature in Actioner enables seamless coordination between workflows within an Actioner workspace. It empowers you to build dynamic and responsive workflows through asynchronous communication and event-driven automation.

With this feature, your workflows can publish and subscribe to events, facilitating the asynchronous triggering of actions based on specific triggers or changes in state. Leveraging events, your workflows seamlessly integrate with external systems, orchestrate complex processes, and deliver real-time notifications.

Key components​

  1. Event publishing

    • Workflows can generate events using the Actioner event nodes.
    • Events typically generate JSON data containing relevant information about a particular occurrence of a specific event.
    • You can set your workflow to publish events based on various criteria, such as task completion, data updates, or external system interactions.

  2. Event subscription

    • Workflows can be triggered by subscribing to specific events using the Actioner event triggers.
    • Subscriptions allow workflows to receive any occurrence of the event, regardless of the event's source or origin.
    • A workflow can subscribe to only one event. You can apply trigger conditions to process specific events.
    • Multiple workflows can subscribe to the same event.
    • You can subscribe to multiple events by creating multiple workflows.

  3. Event handling

    • Upon receiving an event through an Actioner event trigger, the workflow executes predefined actions.
    • You can apply operators or different actions to define how to handle the event and how your workflow should react to a specific event.
    • You can access the event payload to extract relevant information and execute appropriate actions.

  4. Events in your apps

    • You can view the list of events in your app on the Events tab of your app.
    • You can create new events and update or delete the existing ones.
    • You can select an event to be Shared or Private. Private events restrict triggering exclusively to workflows within the same app. Shared events open up the possibility for any workflow within your Actioner workspace to subscribe and enables interoperability across your apps.

Benefits​

Using events offers several advantages:

  1. Decoupling workflows: Events decouple workflows, allowing them to operate independently. Without events, workflows would directly interact with each other, creating tight dependencies. By using events, workflows remain loosely coupled, enhancing modularity and maintainability.

  2. Scalability: With events, adding additional actions or workflows becomes easier. If, for example, you want to trigger additional actions in response to a contact being created, you can simply subscribe another workflow to the event without modifying existing workflows. This scalability is particularly valuable as your system grows and evolves.

  3. Flexibility: Events provide flexibility in handling actions and triggers. By separating event publishing from action execution, you can customize the handling of events and define different actions based on specific event conditions. This flexibility enables finer-grained control over workflow behavior.

  4. Centralized event handling: Using events centralizes event handling logic. Instead of duplicating message sending logic in multiple workflows, you can consolidate it into a single event handling workflow. This simplifies maintenance and reduces the likelihood of inconsistencies or errors in message sending logic.

  5. Interoperability: Events promote interoperability between different apps and workflows. By adhering to a common event schema, workflows from different sources can interact seamlessly. This interoperability fosters collaboration and integration across diverse systems and apps.

  6. Enhanced visibility and monitoring: Events provide visibility into system interactions and facilitate monitoring and troubleshooting. With event-driven workflows, you can track event propagation, monitor event handling, and identify potential bottlenecks or issues more effectively.