How Workflows Run

What Starts a Workflow

A workflow can have up to 5 starters:

• A schedule. Every so many minutes (from every 15 minutes to every week), or once a day at a time you pick, in your own time zone from Business Hours. Each slot starts one run. If MountDev Ops was busy and missed several slots, the workflow runs once, not once for every missed slot, and the same slot never starts twice.
• An event from any app. For example, a contact was added in CRM. A run keeps only the event's number, its type, and the record's number, never what is in the record. A change a workflow itself made never starts a workflow, so workflows cannot loop.
• You pressing Run (action workflows.run). It starts one run now, whether or not the workflow is on.

Only a workflow that is on starts by schedule or event. A new workflow is saved off, and only a person turns it on (actions workflows.save, workflows.turn_on, and workflows.turn_off).

The Four Kinds of Step

• Action. Runs one action from the action catalog. The workflow is checked against the catalog when it is saved, so an action that does not exist, an input it does not have, a missing required input, or more uses of an action than its limit per workflow is refused. The Wait Before the Next Step action (core.wait) holds the run until the time it answers with.
• Condition. Compares a number, a true or false, or a word from the run so far (input. or steps.<name>.) and goes on to a later step, or ends the run. A condition only goes forward, so a workflow never loops.
• Wait. Holds the run from 1 second up to 30 days.
• Approval. Stops the run and makes a card for an admin or an owner.

Inputs can use {{input.record_id}} or {{steps.first.count}} to carry something from the run into a step. Keys and tokens are never put in a workflow. They come from your account's connections, and a workflow that has one in its inputs is refused.

Cards That Wait for You

A step that spends money, deletes data, or emails a client always stops and makes a card, however the workflow was written, and it cannot be marked to run on its own. The run waits, without limit, until a signed-in person with the role presses Confirm (action workflows.confirm) or Decline (action workflows.decline). Money waits for an owner; every other card is for an owner or an admin. A member cannot see or answer a card, and an AI agent, an API key, or an assistant never does. See the cards waiting for you with action workflows.cards.

Declining a card stops the run. Nothing after that step happens.

When a Step Fails

A failed action is tried again after 1 minute, then 5 minutes, then 30 minutes, then 2 hours, up to the step's number of retries (3 unless the workflow says otherwise, at most 4). After the last try the step and the run are marked failed with a short plain reason, and it is never tried again on its own.

Every call to an action carries a key for its run and step. A try repeated after a crash is the same call, so the action can tell it already has it. A step can give its own key, and a second step of the same run with the same key reuses the first one's result and does not run the action again.

What Is Kept

Every run and every step is kept in your account: its state, how many tries it took, and what it returned. What it returned is cut down to ids, counts, and true or false. A failure keeps a short reason with anything that looks like a key, a token, or an address taken out. See the runs with action workflows.runs, and stop one that has not finished with action workflows.run_stop.

A run keeps the steps it started with. If you change a workflow while a run is going, that run finishes the way it began, and the next run uses the new steps. See your workflows with action workflows.list.

How Much It Does at Once

One wake-up starts the schedules that are due and takes up to 20 runs, up to 40 steps of each. The rest wait for the next wake-up, which comes at once when a run is ready.