Workflows
A job that runs on its own, in a fixed order, with nobody watching.
A workflow is a sequence of steps that runs without you: on a schedule, when something happens, or when you press a button.
How it differs from an agent
An agent is someone you talk to. A workflow is something that happens.
| Agent | Workflow | |
|---|---|---|
| You are | in the conversation | not there |
| Order of work | it decides | you decide, in advance |
| Good at | open-ended requests | the same job, the same way, every time |
| Result | a reply to you | files, emails, a posted summary |
An agent can be given a schedule, and for a single-step job ("summarise yesterday's tickets each morning") that is simpler and you should do that instead.
Reach for a workflow when the job has several steps in a fixed order, especially if a person needs to approve something in the middle, or a step should only happen under certain conditions.
What one is made of
A trigger, which decides when it starts. Every workflow has exactly one. See Triggers.
Steps, in order, of four kinds. See Steps.
| Step | Does |
|---|---|
| Agent | Runs an agent with instructions and tools |
| Approval | Pauses until a person approves or rejects |
| Condition | Branches or skips steps based on a check |
| Action | Performs one specific thing: sends, saves, writes |
Steps pass results along. Step 3 can use what step 1 produced.
A worked shape
A weekly competitor digest:
- Agent: search the web for what our three competitors published this week and summarise it.
- Condition: did it find anything worth reporting? If not, skip to the end.
- Agent: write it up in our house format.
- Approval: pause so a human reads it before it goes out.
- Action: email it to the marketing list.
That is a workflow because the order is fixed, a person has to sign off in the middle, and it should quietly do nothing on a slow week rather than send an empty email.
Before you build one
A workflow runs with nobody there to ask. Steps that would pause and check with you in a chat do not pause here: they go ahead, using the connected accounts of whoever set up the schedule.
If a workflow can send email, it will send email, as you, at 9am on a Monday, based on whatever the earlier steps produced. Use an Approval step for anything you would want to see first.
Also worth knowing before you invest time:
- Workflows can be switched off for your whole organisation. If you see "Workflows aren't enabled for your organization", ask your administrator.
- Sharing a workflow as Editor is a bigger deal than elsewhere. A scheduled run uses your connected accounts, so a step another editor adds later can send mail or edit files as you, without asking. See Sharing your work.
Building one
Workflows in the left rail of the Agents area, then New workflow.
You can also describe what you want in plain language and have a draft generated for you. Nothing is saved until you save it, and the draft tells you which parts of your request it could not include, which is worth reading rather than skipping.
Or just ask in a chat. Describe the workflow you want ("every Monday, research what our competitors announced and email me a digest") and Asteria drafts it for you. You get a card showing the trigger, the steps in order, and the parts of your request it could not wire up, and nothing is created until you approve that card. The workflow you end up with is an ordinary one: open it in the builder afterwards to finish off the parts it left to you.
Either way you get a builder: a trigger at the top, steps below, Save when you are done.
Next
- Triggers: a button, a schedule, or reacting to something happening elsewhere.
- Steps: the four kinds, and how to pass results between them.
- Runs: watching one, approving a step, working out what went wrong.
- Tutorial: your first workflow.