Creating Your First Workflow

Step 1. Sign in

Before you start creating your first workflow, make sure you have signed up with Built.io Flow. If you already have your login credentials, sign in to Built.io Flow. You can also opt to sign in via SSO using your IdP credentials or via your Google account.

Step 2: Select or add project

Once you log in, you will be redirected to the dashboard. Here, you will see a 'Default' project, and an option to create new project. Projects are like folders that save your workflows within them, and help you categorize your workflows. Read more about Projects.

Click on the ‘Default’ project to create a new workflow within it. 

You can optionally choose to create a new project. To do so, click on the 'Add New Project' link and provide a unique name for the project in the dialogue box that appears. When you click 'CREATE', you will be navigated to the 'Workflows' screen, where you can start creating your first workflow.

Step 3. Create workflow

To create a new workflow, click the ‘+ Blank Workflow’ link. This will navigate you to the Built.io Flow canvas, where you can see an empty untitled workflow. This canvas is your playground. Here, you can mix and match triggers and actions to create some really awesome workflows. 

To rename the workflow, click on the 'Edit' icon given beside the workflow name, at the top-left corner of the canvas. A new window will appear, where you can add/modify details such as workflow name, tags, and description. Once you have entered these details, click on 'Done'. This will take you back to the canvas.

A workflow is essentially made up of two elements: A Trigger and one or more Actions. A trigger is something that fires off a workflow, and actions are the tasks that the workflow performs automatically. 

Let’s create a simple workflow: Whenever you post a new tweet in Twitter, send the tweet content to an email address.

If we break this workflow into parts, we get:

Trigger → ‘When you post a new tweet in Twitter’

Actions → ‘Send me an email’.

Let’s start with setting up the trigger.

Step 4. Set up trigger

To get started with triggers, hover on the ‘Start’ icon, and click the ‘Settings’ icon that appears. In the dialog box that opens up, you will see a list of services on the right. Each of these services has multiple trigger actions. Scroll down to locate the service you want, or search at the top if you have a specific service in mind.

In this case, we will look for ‘Twitter’ and select it.

Step 4.1. Configure Twitter - My Tweet

Enter details in the fields as per the instructions given below:

Trigger Label: Provide a suitable name for this trigger (E.g., Twitter - My tweet)

Authorize Twitter: Select an existing or add a new authorization. By doing this, you authorize Built.io Flow to perform certain tasks in Twitter on your behalf.

Select Trigger: Select an event as trigger action that will fire off the workflow. For our example workflow, we will select ‘My Tweet’. This option triggers the workflow whenever you post a tweet in your Twitter account.

Once you have entered all the details, click on ‘Save’ to save your trigger. This will create the specified trigger on Built.io Flow.

After this, you will be redirected to the ‘Test Trigger’ window, where you can check if you have configured the trigger settings properly.

To test your trigger, you need to perform the trigger action in the web service account for which you are setting up a trigger (these instructions can be seen in the ‘Test Trigger’ window as well). For this example, go to your Twitter account and post a new tweet. 

Once this is done, go back to your trigger in Built.io Flow and click on the ‘Test’ button given at the bottom of the ‘Test Trigger’ form. Built.io Flow will now fetch the data of the tweet that you just posted on your Twitter account.

If you have configured the trigger correctly, you will see the output data for the trigger. This will give you an idea of how your trigger will work when used in a workflow and which keys are returned in the output of the trigger. This output data will then be used to configure the rest of the workflow.

If you ‘Skip’ testing the trigger, Built.io Flow will use mock data for that trigger to configure the rest of the workflow.

You can also set custom filters to specify the conditions which must be met in order to execute the workflow. To do this, click on the ‘filters’ link given at the bottom of the trigger output.

A new window will appear where you can set up custom triggers using the sample output data returned.

Once you have entered all the details, click on ‘Done’. And that’s it! Your ‘Twitter – My Tweet’ trigger has been configured.

When you return to the canvas, you will notice that the start icon has now been replaced with the Twitter icon. This confirms that the Twitter trigger has been set up properly.

Let us now set up the action.

Step 5. Set up action

Use ‘Gmail – Send an Email’ action

The action that you need to add to your workflow is ‘Gmail – Send an Email’, which lets you send an email to the specified recipient.

Step 5.1. Select action

On the right-hand side of the canvas, under ‘Services’, look for Gmail, and click on it. You will see a list of actions available for Gmail. From the list, drag and drop the ‘Send an Email’ action on to the canvas anywhere between the ‘Start’ and ‘Stop’ icon.

Step 5.2. Connect action

You need to connect the ‘Gmail - Send an Email’ action to the ‘Start’ icon (which is now Twitter icon). To do this, hover on the start icon. A small circle will appear on the right-hand side edge of the action. Drag a line from this icon till ‘Gmail - Send an Email’.

Step 5.3. Configure Gmail - Send an Email action

Configure the ‘Gmail - Send an Email’ action as given below:

Authorize Gmail: Click on the dropdown list and select 'Add new'. Log in to your Gmail account to create an authorization.

To: {your email address}

Subject: {any subject of your choice}

Body Type: text

Body: You can use the output of the ‘Twitter - My Tweet’ trigger as an input for this field. The output of the trigger is visible on the right-hand side of the window, under the {trigger_name} - Trigger Data field. When you click on the drop down arrow given beside the trigger name, you can see the list of trigger output keys along with the sample output values retrieved from the previous trigger test execution.

From the trigger output list, select the ‘text’ parameter for the ‘Body’ field. This will include the content (text) of the tweet in the body of the email, when the workflow is executed.

Once you have entered all the details, click on ‘Next’. 

Step 5.4 Test action

A new window will appear where you can see the input details you have entered for ‘Gmail - Send an Email’ action. Click on the ‘Test’ button given at the bottom of the window to check if you have configured the action properly.

When you click on the ‘Test’ button, Built.io Flow will send an email containing the tweet to the specified recipient via Gmail, and will show the output of this action in the window that appears. 

This lets you check whether the action is working as expected and also fetches the sample output for this action, which can be used while setting up the next actions.

Once you have entered all the details, click on the ‘Done’ button. 

Step 6. Complete and save your workflow

You workflow is not complete until you:

-   Connect the last action to the ‘Stop’ icon

-   Save your workflow

Once you complete the workflow, you have successfully created your first workflow.

It is now time to test your workflow.

Step 7. Trigger your workflow

To trigger the workflow, we will reproduce the event that we defined in our workflow trigger. In other words, we will post a new tweet in Twitter, which should trigger our workflow.

To do this, log in to your Twitter account, and post a tweet.

As soon as you do this, the workflow will be executed. Note that some trigger events may take time to trigger the workflow (Read types of triggers).

You will see the real-time visualization of the progress of your workflow. This will all happen in a matter of seconds. Once the workflow is completed, check your inbox for any mails from Built.io Flow. You must have received an email that contains the body text of the tweet.

Now that you know the basics of creating a workflow, read our Guide section to learn about the various tools that you can use to create integrations.