How to build your first workflow

This page builds one workflow end to end: when a repair is logged as urgent, create a task for the warehouse team. Everything else in this section goes deeper on a step of it. Start at What are workflows? for the concepts.

Before you start

Building needs the workflow manage permission, and publishing needs a separate one. Both are admin jobs by default.

If you can open a workflow but everything is fixed in place, you have view access and the corner reads View only.

How do you create one?

New workflow on the workflows list. It opens straight onto the canvas with the title selected, so type over Untitled workflow immediately.

You can also create one from the Create menu anywhere in Tideswell.

Name it after what it does rather than what it is. "Urgent repair to warehouse" is findable in six months and "Workflow 3" is not.

How does the canvas work?

You build left to right. The step library is on the left, the canvas in the middle, and a step's options open on the right when you click it.

• Add a step by clicking a card in the library. There is no dragging to add.
• Browse the library with the rail: All, Triggers, Conditions, Actions, Notify, Advanced. Or type in Search steps….
• Connect two steps by dragging from the right-hand dot of one to the left-hand dot of the next.
• Move a step by dragging it.
• Remove one with the small × on its card, or from its options panel.

Each step's panel names what it Reads and what it Gives, which is the fastest way to understand a step you have not used.

Step one: the trigger

From Triggers, pick the record type and whether you want it on creation or on change. For this example: a Repairs record being created.

Every workflow has exactly one trigger, and the flow starts there. See How to choose a trigger.

Step two: the condition

From Conditions, add a comparison on the repair: urgency is Urgent.

Connect the trigger's right dot to the condition's left dot.

A condition has two outgoing dots: a green Yes and a red No. Which one your line leaves from decides which branch it is, and that is the single most common thing to get wrong. See How to add a yes/no decision.

Step three: the action

From Actions, add Create task. Drag from the condition's green Yes dot to it.

In its panel, set the department to Warehouse, write a title, and set a due date a couple of days out.

Put the repair's own details in the title so the task is specific rather than generic. See How to use values from the triggering record.

How do you save and tidy?

Save. Nothing saves automatically, and leaving without saving loses the edits.

If the canvas is messy, Tidy up the layout re-places every step from its connections. Zoom and fit-to-screen are beside it.

A step that is not finished gets a red outline and a plain-English message telling you what is missing, such as choosing a comparison for a field you named.

Because nothing autosaves, leaving without saving is also how you undo a tidy you did not like.

How do you make it actually run?

Two separate things, and this catches everybody once.

Publish it, which freezes the current version as the live one. Then switch it on with the toggle on the workflows list.

A workflow that is published and switched off does nothing. So does one that is switched on and never published. See How to publish, switch on and read a run.

How do you test it?

Change a record it watches, then open the Runs tab.

Workflows are not instant: changes are picked up on a cycle of a few minutes. Wait, then read the run as a story of what it did, step by step.

How do you change one that is already live?

Edit it and save. Editing the steps of a published workflow flips it back to draft while the live version keeps running unchanged.

Publish again to make your changes the live ones. Renaming a workflow does not flip it to draft.