Create, test and publish a workflow

In short: You create a workflow in Account > Workflows with New workflow, or you add one from the library. In the editor you choose the trigger, add steps and connect their exits. With Try out you see what the workflow would do, without anything happening. Only after Publish does it really run.

Where to find this

Go to Account > Workflows. You need the role Organisation admin for your organisation’s workflows. You create and change a workflow for the whole account as an Account admin.

The list of workflows

The Workflows page shows per workflow:

Click a row to open the workflow in the editor.

Start a new workflow

You start from nothing, from the library or with an AI assistant. In every case you first get a draft that does nothing yet.

From nothing

1. Click New workflow.
2. Enter a name under What is the workflow called? and confirm with New workflow.
3. The editor opens. The new workflow is a Draft with the trigger A message comes in and no steps yet.

An Organisation admin creates the workflow for the organisation they are working in at that moment. An Account admin uses this button to create a workflow for the whole account.

From the library

1. Go to Account > Library.
2. Click Add as draft next to a workflow.
3. The workflow is now a draft in Account > Workflows. Nothing runs until you publish it.

Agent steps in a library workflow get AI agents from your own account. See The library.

With an AI assistant

An AI assistant that works through the connection with aishaa can design a workflow and save it as a draft. It gets a link to the editor with it. Publishing is always done by a person in aishaa. See Workflow recipes and The workflow definition.

The editor

The editor fills the whole screen. At the top are the name, the status (Version {number} is live or Not published yet) and whether there are Unsaved changes or Unpublished changes. You also see {number} to fix before publishing or Ready to publish there. Click the problems to see them.

With View you switch between:

At the top right are Save draft, Publish and a menu with Pause or Resume, Back to the standard (only for the standard workflow) and Delete.

The workflow editor in the Design view: on the left the canvas with the trigger and the steps as boxes, on the right the Workflow panel with Name, Description, May write next to an answer, Show as ticket tab and the Building assistant, at the top the Save draft and Publish buttons (menu Account > Workflows).

The canvas

The canvas shows the trigger at the top and the steps below it as boxes, with arrows for the exits. The routes of a choice are next to each other.

• Drag to move, scroll or pinch to zoom, double-click to see everything.
• Click a box to edit it on the right.
• With the back button or Close in the panel you return to the Workflow panel. On a narrow screen you open that panel with the Workflow button in the top bar.

The Workflow panel

When nothing is selected, the panel on the right shows the workflow itself:

At the top of the panel is also the button to lock the workflow. A locked workflow has the label Locked and you cannot change it until someone unlocks it. See Lock configuration.

Set up the trigger

1. Click the top box of the canvas. The When panel opens.
2. Under This happens, choose the event. Below the choice is what that event means.
3. Under Only if, add conditions with Add condition. For each condition, choose a Field, a comparison and, under Compare with, the value. All conditions must be met.
4. Optionally, under Never twice at once for, choose a field, such as the ticket. Then no new run starts as long as a run is still open for the same value.

The comparisons are is, is not, greater than, at least, less than, at most, contains, is filled and is empty. A trigger condition only looks at the fields of the event itself, not at content such as the text of a message. Test content in a Condition or Choose a route step. All fields are listed in Triggers and events.

If you choose On a schedule, you set up a schedule instead of conditions. See Scheduled workflows.

Add steps

1. Click Add step on the canvas. The blocks are in groups: Fetch, AI, Work on, Do, Decide, Repeat, Wait, A person and Agents. Below each block is what it does.
2. Choose a block. The new step appears on the canvas and the panel opens.
3. If the selected step (or otherwise the last step) did not go anywhere yet and has no exits, it now goes to the new step with Then. For steps with exits, you connect the routes yourself.

A new step starts with values that almost work. An Ask a person step, for example, starts with the answers approve and reject, and a Plugin action with Propose to a person.

Set up a step

The panel of a selected step with What this step does, Step name, the input fields, the If … dropdowns per exit and If this fails (menu Account > Workflows, open a workflow, click a step).

With Move up and Move down you change the order. The top step has the badge Starts here: every run starts there. Remove step removes the step.

Use values from earlier steps

In text fields you can use Insert a value to choose a value the run knows: a field of the event (for example the text of the message) or the outcome of an earlier step. The field then contains a reference such as {{trigger.message.text}}. The editor shows it as readable text, for example “Number in the system from Find the order”. More about this in References, routing, repeating and choosing.

Use the building assistant

1. Make sure nothing is selected, so that the Workflow panel is visible.
2. Under Building assistant, type what the workflow should do, or what should change. For example: “When a WhatsApp message comes in outside office hours, ask the team lead whether to call back.”
3. Click Ask. aishaa answers in a few sentences and, for a change, proposes a new draft under Proposed change, with what changes (new steps, changed steps, removed steps, a different trigger).
4. Click Use this draft to put it in the editor, or Not now.
5. The proposal is now in the editor, not saved yet. Check it, then save or publish.

If the proposal still has problems, you see The proposal still has problems; you can fix them in the editor. The building assistant knows your organisation’s AI agents, labels, teams, colleagues and connected systems.

Problems before publishing

aishaa checks the draft while you work. As long as there are problems, you cannot publish. The most common ones:

Hover over a message for the exact technical explanation.

Try out

Choose View > Try out. Trying out always works on the draft as it is in the editor now, including unsaved changes. Nothing is saved and nobody receives anything.

The Try out view with How often would it have run?, the Count button, the list of recent events with Would start and the Try it on last week block (menu Account > Workflows, open a workflow).

How often would it have run?

1. Choose a period: Last 7 days, Last 30 days or Last 90 days.
2. Click Count.
3. You see Of {number} events, {number} would have started this workflow., and under Stopped by which condition stopped the others.

Counting only looks at the trigger and the conditions. No AI runs. With a very large number of events, aishaa counts the latest 50,000 and says so.

Try out on one event

Under Try it on one of these events are recent events with Would start or Would not start. Click Try out next to an event.

• Conditions and AI steps run for real. A Choose from a list step therefore really asks the AI agent for a choice.
• A Write the reply step shows the proposal the AI agent wrote for that message at the time, and whether it would have been sent by itself under today’s permissions. If there is no proposal from then, you choose the exit.
• A Carry out a task step does not let the AI agent really work, because its proposals would be real. You choose how the task ends.
• Everything else (a question, a task, an action, a message, waiting) is only shown, with a label such as Would ask a person, Would leave a task or Would propose the action.
• Where a person would decide, you choose under What does the person do here? what that person does. Then the trial continues.
• For each step you see In and Out. At the end is The workflow would end here. or where it would stop.

You try out a workflow On a schedule with Try as if it were now.

Try it on last week

Under Try it on last week, click Try on last week. aishaa runs the draft on the real events of the past seven days that pass the trigger, at most 25. You see per event and in total:

The replies are the proposals from back then; nothing is sent.

Save and publish

1. Click Save draft to keep your work. Nothing changes in what is live.
2. Click Publish when all problems are solved. Unsaved changes are saved first.
3. If another active workflow on the same trigger also writes to the customer, you see the message Also writing to the customer. Choose Publish anyway or Cancel.
4. You see Version {number} is live. New runs start on this version from now on. Runs that were already going finish on their own version.

A workflow that has a Write the reply step at its first publication immediately becomes a ticket tab as well.

Versions

Choose View > Versions. You see the draft (with Unpublished changes if it differs) and every published version with Published by {name} on {moment}. The live version has the label Live. For each version you see the Changes compared to version {number}.

To restore an older version:

1. Click Back to the draft next to that version.
2. The version is now in the draft. Publish to make it live again. It then becomes a new version; the history stays complete.

Pause, resume and delete

Pausing, resuming, publishing and deleting appear in the changes feed. See Changes and reverting.

Good to know

• The status Draft means: never published. Changes after a publication show as Unpublished changes; the previous version then stays live.
• Saving the draft is not a change to the live workflow. A locked workflow also does not accept a new draft.
• May write next to an answer, Show as ticket tab and Short name in the tab take effect straight away and do not create a new version.
• The building assistant and an AI assistant through the connection never save anything live themselves. Publishing is always an action by a person.
• Trying out with AI steps really uses AI. Counting does not use AI.
• You cannot delete an AI agent that is in a step of a workflow.

Related

• What are workflows
• Triggers and events
• Building blocks of a workflow
• References, routing, repeating and choosing
• Following runs and catching errors
• Workflow recipes
• The workflow tab on the ticket
• The library