Workflows Screens

What You See

Workflows is an app in your menu with four pages and its own Settings: Workflows, Run History, Approvals, and Templates. Owners, admins, and anyone whose role or permission group allows it see them. The Workflows pages need the permission to add, change, and run workflows. Approvals needs the permission to confirm cards. Both are switches in Settings, Permissions, so a custom role can have either one. Everyone else does not see the app. A workflow's builder opens from the Workflows page and is not a menu item of its own.

The Workflows Page

The Workflows page lists every workflow with when it starts, how many steps it has, its last run, and when it starts next. Three tiles at the top show how many are turned on, how many are turned off, and how many cards are waiting for your OK. Press the waiting tile to open Approvals.

Under each workflow's name the list says what it used this month and its share of all your workflows' work, such as "Background work this month: 494 (83% of all)", or "none" when it has not run. Below the list, one line gives the total your workflows used this month (see Usage below).

• New Workflow opens the builder with nothing in it (action workflows.save).
• Run Now starts one run at once, whether the workflow is on or off (action workflows.run). Watch it under Run History.
• Turn On asks first, and the question says what the workflow will use ("About 3 per run, about 9,000 a month at this schedule"), then switches the workflow on so it starts by itself (action workflows.turn_on). Turn Off switches it off and stops its next scheduled run at once (action workflows.turn_off).
• Pressing a workflow's name opens it in the builder (action workflows.get).
• The list itself comes from action workflows.overview.

With no workflows, the page says so and offers New Workflow and See Templates.

The Builder

The builder has two tabs, Build and Usage. Build has three cards, Name, What Starts It, and Steps, then What It Will Use (see Usage below). The Usage tab shows what the workflow used. The save bar at the top of the screen shows as soon as you change anything, with Discard and Save. Nothing is kept until you press Save, a failed save keeps your changes and says why, and leaving with unsaved changes asks first. What you typed is also kept in your own account for a few seconds after each change, so a reload does not lose it. A new workflow is always saved turned off.

What Starts It holds up to 5 starters. Add a Starter offers three kinds: on a schedule (every so many minutes, from every 15 minutes to every week, or once a day at a time in your Business Hours time zone), when something happens in one of your apps (the list is your own apps and modules), or when you press Run.

Steps run in order. Add a Step offers four kinds:

• Do something runs one action. You pick it from the actions your account has, fill in what it needs, and choose how many times to try again if it fails (0 to 4). An action that spends money, deletes data, or emails a client says so, and always waits for your OK in a card. It cannot run on its own. People are chosen by name, and a value that comes from the run (the record that started it, or the result of an earlier step) is chosen from a list in plain words, so nobody types codes. Keys and tokens are never put in a workflow.
• Check something compares a number, a yes or no, or a word from what started the run or from an earlier step, then goes on, skips ahead to a later step, or ends the run. A check only goes forward, so a workflow never loops.
• Wait holds the run from 1 second to 30 days.
• Ask for an OK stops the run and asks an owner, an admin, or anyone whose role allows confirming cards, a question you write. Declining ends the run.

Each step has Move Up, Move Down, Edit, and Remove. Test Run (action workflows.test) shows what each step would do, marks each step Free or counted, and says what a real run of it would use, using what is on the screen, saved or not. It starts no run, makes no card, and changes nothing. An action that has a test mode runs in it and shows what it would answer. An action with no test mode is only described. A step that would stop for a card says so. If the workflow has a problem a save would refuse, Test Run lists it in plain words.

Turn On and Turn Off work from the builder too, after the workflow has been saved.

When you save, a workflow with no name or no steps is refused with a plain sentence, and a workflow that uses an action your account does not have is refused with a plain sentence, and nothing is kept (action workflows.save).

Which Actions You Are Offered

Only the actions your account has appear in the builder (action workflows.catalog). An action that is not part of your account is not shown, and a workflow that uses one is refused when it is saved, even if it was sent some other way.

Run History

Run History starts with the Background Work card (see Usage below). Then it lists the newest runs, with the workflow, when each was queued, when it started and finished, how it started, what it counted, and its state: Starting, Running, Waiting, Waiting for You, Done, Failed, or Stopped (action workflows.runs). Two filters narrow the list by workflow and by state. Every run waits its turn in your own queue, then runs: a run that has not started yet says "Waiting its turn", and the others show when each was queued, started, and finished. Press a run to read it: the three times, then each step with its state, whether it counted or was Free, how many tries it took, when it started, what it returned, and a short plain reason when it failed. The run says how much it counted in all. What a step returned is kept as ids and counts only, and a reason has no key, token, or address in it.

A run that has not finished can be stopped with Stop This Run, after a question (action workflows.run_stop). Nothing after the current step happens.

Usage

Workflow work counts in your plan's Background work line, and every screen says what a workflow uses.

• What counts. Each step that runs an action counts 1, and every try counts, retries included. Checks, waits, and the ask for an OK are free.
• On the list, each workflow shows what it used this month and its share of all your workflows' work.
• On a workflow, the Usage tab shows this month, last month, the average per run, its share, and which steps use the most (action workflows.get). A step that was taken out of the workflow is listed as "A step that was removed" so its work is not lost.
• Before turning it on, the What It Will Use card on the Build tab shows what a run uses, what a month of it uses at its schedule, and how long a month of it takes with your runners and with more, for example "About 3 hours with 1 runner | About 20 minutes with 10" (action workflows.will_use, which works on a workflow that is not saved yet). A workflow with checks says "Up to" because a check may skip a step. A workflow that starts when something happens says what 100 runs a month would use.
• Runner time is an estimate until runners are measured: a simple step takes about a tenth of a second on 1 runner (the same figure the queue uses), and calls to outside services take longer. Add Extra Runners explains that every company has 1 runner included, each Extra Runner is $10 a month, and all runners share your company's one usage pool, so more runners finish work sooner without changing what it counts.
• In Run History, the Background Work card shows what your workflows used this month and what is using it, by workflow (action workflows.usage), and each run shows what each step counted.

All of this is worked out from your own run log. It never reads a record.

Settings

The last item in the Workflows menu is Settings, with two cards. Runners and Usage says your company has 1 runner included and offers Add Extra Runners and See What Workflows Use. Who Can Use Workflows points to Settings, Permissions, where the two Workflows permissions are given, like every app.

Approvals

The Approvals page lists the cards waiting for you (action workflows.cards). Each card says what the step does, which workflow and run it belongs to, why it stopped (Spends Money, Deletes Data, Emails a Client, or Needs Your OK), and who may answer. Confirm asks first, then lets the run go on (action workflows.confirm). Decline asks first, then stops the run (action workflows.decline). Both are written in the Activity Log with your name. A card that spends money is for an owner. Any other card is for anyone allowed to confirm cards.

Templates

Templates lists the ready-made workflows your account was given (action workflows.templates). Use This Template makes a copy in your account that starts turned off (action workflows.template_use). The copy is yours to change and keeps no link to the template, so a later change to the template never changes it. With no templates, the page says so.

Keyboard and Phones

Every control works with the Tab key and Esc, and by touch. The screens fit every screen size from a large desktop to the smallest phone, and the lists, builder, and pop ups scroll inside themselves instead of running off the side.