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Workflow nodes

Learn about nodes that can be added to your workflows.

Nodes​

Whether your workflow starts with a form, or with Actioner receiving an event from your application, you can add new steps to your canvas to build complex business logic. These steps are called nodes.

Nodes in a workflow can be

  • Actions from integrations

  • Operators to process complex logic

  • Functions to manipulate and streamline the data produced from other nodes

  • Outputs that produce visual results, such as tables, charts, or informational text

  • Responses that generates a JSON response once the workflow is run

Actions​

An action in Actioner refers to a specific task or operation that is performed on data or information as part of a workflow.

A workflow consist of one or more actions that are executed based on specific triggers or events. These actions can include tasks like sending an email, creating a record in a database, updating a spreadsheet, or sending a Slack message to a user.

Actions can be customized and configured to suit the specific needs of the workflow, and they can be combined with other actions to create complex, multi-step automations. Actions can also be conditional, meaning they only execute when specific conditions are met, such as when a certain field in a form is filled or when a specific keyword is included in the event that triggers the workflows.

Overall, actions are a key component of building effective and efficient automations, allowing you to streamline you workflows and eliminate repetitive, manual tasks.

Operators​

Operators are essential building blocks of automations, enabling you to create powerful workflows that can manipulate, analyze, and transform data in various ways. They are used to perform logical operations on data from events that trigger workflows or on data produced from the actions in a workflow. Operators are used to create conditions, create a loop, distrubute data and manipulate values within an automation.

There are 4 types of operators in Actioner.

  • Loop: It is a control step that allows you to iterate through a list of items and perform a set of actions on each item in the list.

  • Condition: Lets you speficy whether to continue the next step or not based on rules you specify.

  • Branch: Lets you run independent steps at the same time through multiple paths.

  • Delay: Lets you add a time-based pause or interval between nodes to control the timing and sequencing of actions.

Functions​

A function is a building block written in JavaScript. It is a set of statements that performs a task or calculates a value.

Actioner supports using longer snippets of JavaScript via functions. If you're looking to write a lot of JS, you shouldn't inline it between {{ }}. Functions let you write larger, reusable, blocks of code and enable you to generate some pretty complicated JavaScript snippets.

By adding a function, you can manipulate and transform any data generated by the workflow it is added to. If you find yourself using the same or similar blocks of code multiple times throughout your workflow, it might be worth pulling that out into a function.

Functions are setup to extend the capabilities of your actions to other steps in your workflows. Once created, they are scoped to the workflow that is executed.

Through a function, you can write data to your worksflow's context. You can store data in key:value pairs, and call that key from the later steps in your workflows.

Outputs​

Outputs are the results of manual workflows. A form-triggered workflow takes inputs, executes steps, and generates outputs accordingly.

Outputs can be in various visual forms, such as tables, charts, and informational text. A report of your customer list or a chart showing weekly sales volume are some outputs that can be generated with Actioner. You can take follow-up workflows on your outputs, interact with charts, download and share them.

By running a workflow, you can create a table report that lists your companies and their activities or you can get a pie chart showing the count of your tickets distributed by priority.

Your workflow may have multiple charts and tables or one that shows the result of your workflow. If multiple outputs are setup for your workflow, all of them are produced once you run it. In Slack, you can switch between different output views and share them in your preferred channel.