Triggering a Flow
Prerequisites
- For details on creating a flow, see: Flow Designer
- Required permissions for editing flows.
- Install any required 3rd-party modules that support Flow Triggers.
Flow vs Workflow
- Flow: A template or blueprint that defines a sequence of actions to be performed. Think of it as a recipe.
- Workflow: An instance of a Flow that's created when triggered. Think of it as Flow processing.
Example: You create a "Member Onboarding" Flow with 3 steps (see Flow Designer for an example of this). When a new user registers, the system creates a "Member Onboarding" Workflow for that specific user, containing 3 workflow items that need to be processed.
Workflows are automatically created when specific events occur:
System Triggers (Built-In Oqtane Events)
- User Created, User Updated, User Deleted
- File Downloaded, File Uploaded
- Page Created, Module Added
- These are standard Oqtane platform events
3rd Party Module Triggers
- Custom events from modules that support Flow integration
- Examples: The Dev-One QandA module has a "Form Submitted" Trigger
- Requires the module developer to implement Custom Flow Trigger support
Connecting System Triggers
Connecting your flow to a built-in Oqtane event is easy:
- Simply click the 'Add Flow Trigger' in the Flow Designer.
- Select the Source Entity.
- Select the Event (here we have selected the Create event).
Connecting 3rd Party Triggers
- Flows are connected to 3rd party modules that support custom triggers via the 'Flow Connector' module.
- You should add this module to your site and select 'Display on all pages' from the module settings.
- The Flow Connector module is only visible when the page is in Edit mode.
1. Select the Source Module
Select the source module from the list of available page modules. Here we have selected the 'Contact Us' module, which is a QandA form.
2. Select the Flow and Source Trigger
- Once we have selected the source module, we can click the add button and select the flow we want to attach (here we have selected the 'Member Onboarding' flow), along with the trigger to connect it to.
- NOTE: In this example, as we have selected a QandA form as our source module, we can select the 'Form Submitted' custom trigger that it supports.
- If the selected source module does not support flow triggers, you will not be able to connect it to a flow. Please use 'Add Flow Trigger' in the Flow Designer instead.
