What are workflows?

A workflow is a rule you build: when a record is created or changes, check something about it, then do something. Creating a task, filling in a field, linking two records, or telling somebody.

Find them under Automations › Workflows.

How is this different from an automation?

An automation is one of the jobs Tideswell ships with, and you configure it. A workflow is yours, and you build it on a canvas. See What are automations?.

Use an automation for what every brand needs watched, like stock running out. Use a workflow for the rules that belong to how your business specifically works.

What can a workflow actually do?

Fairgreen Golf Co. runs three, and they are a fair picture of the range.

When a repair is logged and marked urgent, create a task for the warehouse lead, due in two days. The task carries the customer's name from the repair record.

When a fabric trial moves to Approved, notify the production department. Nobody has to remember to pass it on.

When a sample request is created, link it to the supplier it names, so each record shows the other without anybody doing it by hand.

The pattern is the same each time: something changes, a condition is checked, and work appears or somebody is told.

What are the building blocks?

Four sorts of step, plus the Advanced group.

• A trigger, which starts it. Every workflow has exactly one. See How to choose a trigger.
• A condition, which compares something on the record and sends the flow down a Yes or a No path. See How to add a yes/no decision.
• Actions: Create task, and in Advanced, Create any record, Update a field and Connect two records. See How to create tasks, records and links from a workflow.
• Notify someone, which tells one person or a whole department. See How to notify someone from a workflow.

Values from the triggering record can be dropped into a task title, a message or a field, which is what makes the output specific rather than generic. See How to use values from the triggering record.

What starts a workflow?

A record being created, or a record changing. Those are the two.

There is no timer or schedule: a workflow is a reaction to something happening. For work on a rhythm rather than a reaction, use a repeating task instead, per How to make a task repeat.

Two things worth knowing before you build one

Every step works on the record that set the workflow off. It reads that record and it writes to that record. Reaching a different record is not something a step does today, and the builder tells you so.

Whose access is it using? The workflow's owner. Every action it takes is carried out with that person's permissions, and a run says so on screen. If the owner loses a permission or leaves the workspace, the action fails visibly rather than quietly doing nothing.

Who can build and run them?

Reading a workflow and its runs is open to members by default, which is deliberate: anybody should be able to find out why a task appeared.

Building and editing needs the manage permission, and publishing is a separate permission again. Both are admin by default.

Read this section in order

How to build your first workflow walks the whole thing end to end, and is the one to read first. The rest go deeper on each step.

How to publish, switch on and read a run matters more than it sounds: a workflow does nothing until it is both published and switched on, and those are two different controls.