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Workflows overview

Learn about workflows

Workflow is the process of executing and automating routine processes. An event happening in your tool triggers one or multiple actions according to a set of rules. You can use workflows to build your own apps and connect all your tools through actions. Actioner gives you the right tools to automate any process.

Example workflows​

  • If your teams regularly run ads, and collect the lead info in your CRM, you can setup a workflow to automatically sync data between two systems instead of manually exporting and importing leads from one tool to another.

  • When a deal enters the pipeline, your sales teams can get notified of that deal in Slack. By running actions through Slack notifications, they can update a deal in Slack and send data back to your CRM.

  • Customer service teams can get notified about ticket updates in Slack conversations, track ticket progress and update end-users directly from Slack threads and ensure fast resolution.

  • With automated workflows, your DevOps teams can streamline issue tracking, incident management or pull request reviews in Slack, and reduce errors and context switching.

How workflows work​

Every workflow has a trigger, a condition, and steps that run actions.

Trigger is the event that sets the workflow into motion. It can be a new object creation or an update of a record in your system.

Condition is the requirement that the trigger must satisfy for the workflow to execute an action. You can setup conditions based on the data Actioner receives from your system.

Steps are the events that occur as a result of the trigger if conditions are satisfied. You can setup to create a new Slack post or update an entity in your app.

A workflow is set into motion WHEN your system sends an event to Actioner and pings the trigger, IF conditions are met and THEN executes the actions in workflow steps. When you create a workflow, it will run its steps every time the trigger event occurs as long as the conditions are satisfied.

Workflow trigger types​

A workflow is triggered when Actioner receives data

  • through a Webhook or
  • from your connected Slack workspace or
  • from your connected HubSpot account.

Depending on the event source, there are three types of webhooks that you can configure with Actioner: Webhook workflow, Slack workflow and HubSpot workflow.

Slack workflows capture events happening in your Slack workspace. HubSpot workflows capture events happening in your HubSpot account. You can use webhook workflows to capture events happening in your other tools or services.

Webhook workflows​

Sending and receiving data represent a webhook. Webhooks setup in your tools or services let you pass data for events happening in your tool. Actioner provides a URL which your system can send this data towards. For Actioner to receive events of your tool, you need to:

  • Setup an outgoing webhook in your tool that sends data to the URL generated by an Actioner workflow.

→ More about webhook workflows

Slack workflows​

Slack workflow is a specific type of event listener tailored for Slack. It is triggered with a set of events happening in your Slack workspace, such as new members joining a channel or new messages posted to a channel or reactions added to specific messages. For Actioner to receive Slack events, you need to:

  • Add a Slack connection to your app. You can skip this step if your app already has a Slack connection.
  • Add (or invite) Actioner to the Slack channel that you want to listen events from.
  • Select the Slack event you want to listen.

→ More about Slack workflows

HubSpot workflows​

HubSpot workflow is a specific type of event listener tailored for HubSpot. It is triggered with a set of events happening in your HubSpot account, such as deal updates, new contacts being added to your CRM, or companies removed from your HubSpot account. For Actioner to listen receive events, you need to:

  • Add a HubSpot connection to your app and enable Shared credentials option for HubSpot connection. You can skip this step if your app already has a HubSpot connection with Shared credentials option enabled.
  • Connect to your HubSpot account by authorizing Actioner in HubSpot.
  • Select the HubSpot event you want to listen.

→ More about HubSpot workflows

Working with workflows​

Workflows are managed on app level. It means that,

  1. A workflow added to your app can only run the actions of that app.

Event payload

  1. Any data from the triggering event's payload can be used to set up root conditions that trigger your workflow.
  2. Any data from the triggering event's payload can be used to set up step conditions that execute the step added to your workflow.
  3. Any data from the triggering event's payload can be used to generate values for input parameters added to workflow steps.

App storage

  1. Any data from that app's storage can be used to set up root conditions that trigger your workflow.
  2. Any data from that app's storage can be used to set up step conditions that execute the step added to your workflow.
  3. Any data from that app's storage can be used to generate values for input parameters added to workflow steps.

Action context

  1. When a workflow contains multiple steps, the data of an earlier action's context can be used to generate values for step conditions and input parameters of actions added to later workflow steps.

Connections

  1. Slack connections added to that app can be used to trigger Slack workflows.
  2. HubSpot connections (when Shared credentials option enabled) added to that app can be used to trigger HubSpot workflows.

Workflows tab​

To see the workflows in your app or create new ones, navigate to your app on My apps page and go to Workflows tab.

App users (users with the right to run the actions of that app) can view the workflows. Only app admins can create new workflows or update the existing ones.

Creating a workflow​

Click + Add workflow to create a new workflow. Next, enter a name and an optional description and tags. Select workflow type. Available workflow types are webhook, Slack and HubSpot. Creating a workflow

Workflow properties​

Name: It is the name that users find the workflow.

Description: It is a brief summary of the workflow. It can contain tips about how the workflow is triggered and what actions it runs.

Type: It can be webhook, Slack or HubSpot.

Tags: They are used to filter and search workflows. You can search workflows with their name and tags on Workflows list of your app. Tagging workflows is useful when you are dealing with multiple workflows while building an app. You can give the same tag to workflows doing similar jobs and make it easy to find them later.

Editing workflow name, description and tags​

To edit the name, description and tags of a workflow, click ellipsis … at top right corner of your workflow and select Edit. Enter a name, a description and tags on the opening screen.

Editing workflow name and description

Cloning workflows​

To clone a workflow, click ellipsis … at top right corner of your workflow and select Clone.

Cloning a workflow

Clone can be performed by any user in that app. Cloning an workflow to another app can be performed if you are app admin on the destination app.

Disabling and enabling workflows​

To disable a workflow, toggle off the disable button. Toggle the button on to enable a workflow.

Disabling a workflow

Until they are enabled back, disabled webhook workflows do not process any data sent to webhook URL. Similarly disabled Slack or HubSpot workflows do not process any data sent for that Slack or HubSpot event. Also, disabled workflows can not trigger any actions.

Deleting workflows​

To delete a workflow, click ellipsis … at top right corner of your workflow and select Delete.

Deleting a workflow