Introduction: Custom Workflows

Note: We recommend you have some familiarity with GoFormz Workflow Automation and recipe workflow variables before digging into custom workflows.

A workflow is a repeatable automated process. GoFormz Workflow Automation lets you set up form actions that happen automatically based on certain triggers. For example, you may want to send an email to your customer whenever a form is completed. In this case, form completion is the trigger, and emailing the customer is the action.

Custom workflows inject some additional flexibility into what you can do with workflows. Custom workflows are an extension of the Recipe Workflow Model, in the sense that a workflow is modeled as a series of steps, starting with a trigger and followed by one or more actions. However, instead of using a pre-defined sequence of steps, you can choose your own steps from a wide selection of triggers and actions, as well as add keys and values to each step to customize it as needed. In effect, you create your own recipe.

Here is one example of a custom workflow:

When a new Work Order object is created in Salesforce that has a particular value in one of its fields (trigger), create a new GoFormz form with some of its fields pre-filled with fields from the Salesforce Work Order (actions).

It would be difficult to accomplish this with a simple recipe-driven workflow, because there are so many possible choices — each form has different fields, and you may want different fields pre-filled depending on your needs. Custom workflows make this possible. Custom workflows also allow you to extend the example above in countless ways — what if instead of creating a form based on the Salesforce trigger, you want to complete a form? Or send an email notification? Or add rows to a GoFormz data source? Or export a form to PDF and send it to Box? Or all of these things at once? With custom workflows, all of these possibilities are on the table.

A custom workflow consists of a trigger and one or more actions.

• The trigger is the event that puts the workflow into motion. Triggers can be internal (e.g. when a user completes a form) or external (e.g. when a new object is created in Salesforce).
• Actions are what you want GoFormz to do when the trigger occurs. You can string multiple actions together, so the same trigger may cause a series of actions to occur.

The bulk of this documentation goes over the different triggers and actions available to you, with detailed descriptions of what each one does and how to use them.