Build a workflow

A workflow is how you make a repeatable operation run on its own. Every workflow is a chain: one trigger that starts it, followed by one or more actions that do the work. This page covers the vocabulary and walks you from an empty list to a working, activated workflow.

Where workflows live

Open the sidebar's Ecosystem tab (⌘⇧E) and click Workflows; if the list ends at Canvas, click More first. The Ecosystem page also has a Workflows card under Features. The workflow section has a row of tabs across its toolbar: Workflows, Executions, Schedulers, Trigger States and Interventions.

The Workflows tab lists every workflow in your workspace, with columns for Workflow, Labels, Status, Last Run and Updated. Each row shows the workflow's name with its description after it in a muted colour, and its context variables on a line underneath. Hover a cut-off name to read the name and description in full.

Create a workflow

1. Open the Workflows tab.
2. Click New.

There is no dialog. SPARK creates a workflow called Workflow (or Workflow (2), and so on, if the name is taken), opens it in the editor, and offers an Activate shortcut in a Saved as draft notice. The workflow starts as a Draft, so nothing runs until you activate it.

To give it a real name and a description, click its title in the page header, or choose Rename from the editor's ⋯ menu. The Rename workflow dialog edits both; the description is what the Workflows list shows after the name.

The editor

The editor has three parts:

• A toolbar across the top. On the left, the workflow's context variables and Add context variable. On the right, Save, Activate (only while the workflow is not active), Run, and a ⋯ menu with Rename, Invocation settings, Layout (Horizontal or Vertical), Deactivate (only while it is active), and Archive or Restore.
• The canvas, where the trigger and actions sit as cards joined by connections.
• A side panel with two tabs. Configure lists the actions you can add, or, with a card selected, that action's settings. Executions lists this workflow's runs, so you can follow one without leaving the editor.

Triggers and actions

The two building blocks play different roles:

• A trigger decides when a workflow runs. A workflow has exactly one trigger.
• Actions decide what the workflow does once it starts. You chain several in order, and each can read from or write to your data objects, files, and the rest of the workspace.

With nothing selected on the canvas, the Configure tab lists every action under a Search actions... box, in groups, in this order: Custom, Data, Analytics, Collaboration and Trigger. Each entry shows the action's icon in its group's colour, its name, the type of data it takes and gives, and a one-line summary of what it does. A new workflow opens with only the Trigger group unfolded; once it has a trigger, every group opens.

Add a trigger

Open the Trigger group and click a trigger, or drag it onto the canvas.

The list also shows Email Received, Record Created, Record Updated, Task Created and Task Updated. These are disabled in this release: they are listed dimmed, after the triggers that work, with the hint This action is disabled in this workspace., and nothing starts a run from them yet. Only Manual Trigger, Schedule Trigger and File Received start runs. To bring emails into a workflow today, use the Save Emails action instead (see Email ingestion).

The Manual Trigger and Schedule Trigger carry no data into the run; File Received passes the arriving file to the actions that follow. A workflow started by another workflow doesn't need a special trigger; it's made callable through its invocation settings instead (see Invocation).

Add actions

Actions are the steps that run after the trigger, in order.

1. Click an action in the Configure tab, or drag it onto the canvas.
2. Configure its fields in the side panel.
3. Click the next action. It is added after the one you last selected or added, already connected, and the canvas lays the chain out again and pans to it.

The right of the panel's tabs names the step the next click will add after (Adds after), for example → Parse (Read) CSV. To branch, select an earlier card first: a step that already feeds something gets a second connection. A trigger is never connected into, and if the two steps' data types don't line up the connection is still drawn but flagged (see Action Inputs).

Each card on the canvas has a ⋯ menu (right-click the card for the same menu) with Edit action, Duplicate and Delete. You can also copy selected cards with Ctrl+C (Cmd+C on a Mac) and paste them with Ctrl+V.

Disabled actions

Some actions are listed but not yet available in your workspace, for example Send Email, Send Message to Slack and the Email Received, Record Created and Task Created triggers. They sort to the end of their group at half opacity, and hovering one reads This action is disabled in this workspace. You can still add one; its card is dimmed and its panel adds Contact support to enable it. When a run reaches a disabled step, the step is recorded as Skipped, and every step after it is left out, so the run cannot read output that was never produced. A new step never chains from a disabled one: it chains from the nearest enabled step before it.

Common actions

Map to FIGI and Search OpenFIGI read OpenFIGI through an OpenFIGI connection in a shared vault: a workflow never uses a personal vault's connections. See Vaults.

The Ask Agent action is where deterministic automation meets judgment: use plain actions for steps that must run the same way every time, without a model call, and hand the parts that need reasoning to an agent.

Configure an action

Select a card to open its settings in the Configure tab. The head of the panel shows the action's icon, its name (click the pencil, Rename, to give this step its own name), its group badge, and the data type it takes and gives. Below that:

• Data Sources is folded until you open it, with its count (for example 1 / 1) and any error left on the heading. See Action Inputs.
• The action's own fields follow. Where a field can read a context variable, a braces button, Use a context variable, sits beside it.

A few you'll reach for often:

• Ask Agent runs an agent as a step: pick the Agent, write a User instruction, and choose whether to pass it the previous step's data and whether it answers in structured fields. See Ask an agent.
• Parse (Read) CSV reads a CSV. Set the delimiter, or leave it empty to detect it per file, and under More options skip header or footer rows. Fixed-width text files use the separate Parse TXT File action, whose Fixed Width mode takes Column ranges, one start,end range per line. See Read a CSV or Excel file.
• Filter Records keeps only the records that match the conditions you add: a field, an operator (equals, does not equal, contains, does not contain, starts with, ends with, >, >=, <, <=, is null or is not null), and a value.

A reconciliation can also copy chosen source columns onto every output row (the Cols To Result setting). Turn that on for the columns you will want to filter or group the result by, such as a date or an account: a row that matched nothing has no other side to read them from, and those are exactly the rows a reviewer is looking for.

Save, activate and run

Save is enabled only while there are unsaved edits. Save before you leave the editor: moving to another page from the sidebar does not ask first, and edits made since the last save are lost. Saving checks that each action has the number of inputs it needs, and names the action if one has too few or too many, for example "Reconcile" has too few inputs. It requires at least 2 inputs but has 1 connection. It also highlights the cards whose required settings are missing. Saving does not make the workflow live: a new workflow stays a Draft until you activate it.

1. Click Activate in the toolbar. It is disabled while there are unsaved edits (Save your changes first.). If an action is missing a required setting, activation is refused and the card is highlighted so you can fix it.
2. Click Run, then confirm in the Run workflow? dialog. Run is disabled until the workflow is active and saved (hover it: Activate the workflow to run it.), and needs a trigger (Add a trigger, such as Manual Trigger, to run this workflow.). If the workflow has context variables, the Configure workflow context dialog asks for their values first.
3. The side panel switches to its Executions tab, where the new run leads the list. Open it to follow each step; see Executions.

For a scheduled workflow, set the timing in Scheduling instead of clicking Run. To take an active workflow offline, choose Deactivate from the editor's ⋯; its status becomes Inactive.

Manage workflows from the list

Each row of the Workflows list has a ⋯ menu (right-click the row for the same menu):

• Edit workflow opens the editor, as clicking the row does; Open in new tab opens it in a new tab.
• Rename edits the name and description.
• Run starts a run of an active workflow.
• Activate or Deactivate switches the status.
• Duplicate makes a copy at once, named <name> (copy), with the same steps, connections, context variables, invocation settings, labels and description. The copy always starts as a Draft, so a workflow that runs on uploads or a schedule does not run twice before you have looked at it. Its schedules and runs stay with the original.
• Archive hides the workflow and stops it running, after an Archive workflow? confirmation, while keeping its run history. Restore brings it back. The archive icon next to New shows archived workflows, dimmed and marked Archived; an archived workflow cannot be opened, edited or run until restored.

Organize workflows with labels

The Workflows list has a Labels column for tagging workflows. Open a workflow's labels cell to apply existing labels or type a new name to create one (each label carries a colour). Labels are shared across the workspace. To narrow a long list, open Filter, which filters by Name, Status or Labels.

Share a workflow in a thread

To point someone to a workflow or one of its runs, paste the address of its page into a thread. It reads as a chip named after the workflow, or after the run, and a click opens it in the panel beside the thread. See Start a thread.

Where to go next

• Watch and troubleshoot runs: Executions.
• Wire data between steps: Action Inputs.
• Parameterize a workflow: Context variables.
• Hand a step to an agent: Ask an agent.
• Run one workflow from another: Invocation.
• Add a person's sign-off: Human-in-the-loop.
• Read a file, then write records: Read a CSV or Excel file and Save records.