How to create tasks and records from a workflow

The steps that write live in the step library on a workflow's canvas, in Brain › Workflows. Actions holds Create task, plus a create card for each kind of record a workflow can make, such as Create outreach, Create decision, or Create repair for an Object of your own. Advanced adds Create any record, Update a field and Connect two records.

New to workflows? Start at What are workflows?.

Step names such as Create outreach use the word for each kind of record. Your workspace may use its own word for this; Settings › Terminology shows both.

How do you create a task?

Add Create task from Actions and fill in its options panel: Title, Department, Assign to and Due in (days). Assign to starts on Nobody. A Due in (days) of 0 means the day the workflow runs, and leaving it empty gives the task no due date.

Open Advanced inside the panel for Priority and Description. Priority starts on No priority.

Set the department deliberately, because it decides who can edit the task afterwards, per How to edit a task. At Fairgreen Golf Co., an urgent Repair creates a task in the warehouse department, assigned to its lead and due in two days.

Put values from the triggering record in the title, per How to use values from the triggering record. A generic title makes a queue nobody can triage.

How can you tell a task came from a workflow?

Its description ends with a line saying a workflow created it, and naming the record that set it off. That line is also how somebody finds the record when the title is not enough.

On the workflow's Runs tab, the step reads Created the task followed by the task's real title, and Open the task takes you to it. See How to publish, switch on and read a run.

How do you raise an outreach card?

Add Create outreach from Actions. It puts a card on Customers › Outreach, the list your team works through to follow up with customers, covered in How to log and work through outreach.

The panel asks for two things, both marked with an asterisk:

• Assign To: the person who should make contact.
• Customer: which detail of the triggering record names the customer. The choices read as the record and its field, such as Repair → Customer.

Reason, Urgency, Channel (call, email or text) and Outreach type are optional. Outreach types come from your workspace's own list, covered in How to set up your kinds of outreach.

Fairgreen raises an outreach card for every new Repair, so somebody calls the customer to confirm the fault the same day.

How do you see which workflow raised a card?

On the Outreach board, the card carries the workflow's name. For a workflow called New repair call, hovering over the name reads "Raised by the New repair call agent", and the card's own panel says it was raised "via the New repair call agent".

Once cards come from more than one source, Customers › Outreach offers a Raised by filter. Its choices are Someone on the team and the name of each workflow.

How do you create a record of your own Object?

Every Object your team has built gets its own card in Actions, such as Create repair or Create production run. The panel lists that Object's fields, and a required one carries an asterisk. See What is an Object? for what an Object is.

Each field gets the control that suits it:

• A person: pick from your workspace's members.
• A choice list: pick one of its options.
• Yes or no: pick Yes or No.
• A date: pick from the calendar.
• A number or amount: type it.
• A link to another record: search for the record and pick it.
• Text: type it, with values from the triggering record if you like.

When a Fabric trial's lab result comes back within tolerance, Fairgreen creates a Production run named Production run for {{trigger.label}}, so the new run carries the trial's name.

Create any record, in Advanced, does the same job with one extra control at the top. What to create lets you choose the kind of record first.

How do you record a decision from a workflow?

Add Create decision from Actions. Its panel lists the decision's fields: Decision, Why, Alternatives and Decided, among others. Decisions themselves are covered in How to record a decision.

Affects (type) offers the kinds of record a decision can be about, by name, such as Purchase Orders. Put {{trigger.id}} in Affects (record) to tie the decision to the record that set the workflow off.

How do you connect two records?

Add Connect two records from Advanced. It links two records, so each one shows the other, as How to link a record to work, and see what points at it describes.

1. In Connection, choose the kind of link. Each choice names both kinds of record and the link between them.
2. In First record, type {{trigger.id}} for the record that set the workflow off.
3. In Second record, use a value from the triggering record, such as {{trigger.customer}} for a Linked record field called Customer.

Use the field's own key after trigger., as How to use values from the triggering record explains. Without a value from the trigger, the same two records are linked on every run.

How do you update a field?

Add Update a field from Advanced. It changes the record that set the workflow off, and its panel says so.

1. In Set field, choose the field.
2. In To, enter the value it should be set to.

For one of your own Objects, Set field also offers Status, and To then lists your statuses by name. This is how a record moves itself along: a Fabric trial whose lab result reads Within tolerance can set its own status to Approved. Statuses are covered in How to set up the stages a record moves through.

Type the exact value you want saved in To. Values from the record go into titles, messages and create steps, as How to use values from the triggering record explains.

Why did publishing refuse a step?

Because something the step needs is missing, and the message names it. For these steps:

• Create task with no title or no department.
• Update a field with nothing in To. The message starts Update Record: choose what to set, followed by the field's name.
• A create step with a required field left empty. The message starts Create Record: and names the field, for example "Customer" is required.

Fix the step and publish again. The full list of refusals is in How to publish, switch on and read a run.

Whose permissions do these steps use?

The workflow owner's. The owner is the person who created the workflow, shown on its row in Brain › Workflows, and each run ends by naming whose access it used.

Each step needs the permission the owner would need to do it by hand. That means Create tasks in the chosen department, Create outreach, or Repairs · Create for an Object called Repairs. Update a field needs the matching edit permission, such as Edit tasks or Repairs · Update.

These are rows on Settings › Permissions, covered in How to set who can do what. If the owner leaves the workspace or loses a permission, the step fails on the run with the reason shown. Have the person whose access suits the job create the workflow, and check its runs when somebody's role changes.

What stops a workflow setting itself off?

A guard on how often it runs. A workflow that has run 5 times for the same record, or 50 times in all, within 20 minutes has its next runs skipped.

A skipped run shows on the Runs tab as cancelled, with the reason, for example "This workflow already ran 5 times for this record in the last 20 minutes, so this run was skipped. Check it for a step that changes the record it watches." Skipped runs are dropped rather than saved for later. A single run that goes past 50 steps stops and tells you to check it for a loop.

The usual cause is Update a field writing to the record its own trigger watches. Prevent it with Only when these change on the trigger: tick only the fields that should start a run, and leave out the field this workflow writes. See How to choose a trigger.