We’re building a new Workflows feature that is designed to support complex tasks that our existing Automations tool can’t handle. This new visual automation builder lets you create multi-step workflows with time delays, conditional branches, calls to external services, and AI actions directly in your admin area.
Important notes!
- Workflows is available on the Business and Enterprise plans, for users on Discourse hosting.
- For now, this is considered an experimental change! We’re still working on refining and improving this feature, so there may be some rough edges and small tweaks in the coming weeks.
An overview of Workflows
Workflows replaces the scripting-heavy approach of the existing Automations plugin with a node-based visual canvas that you connect to create complex, multi-step logic.
Nodes
There are four broad categories of nodes:
- Triggers initiate a workflow in response to things like events in Discourse (e.g., topic created, user added to group, etc.), a set schedule, a webhook, or a manual action.
- Conditions create branches in the workflow based on yes/no logic for any data in the workflow.
- Actions are events triggered by the workflow, such as sending a PM or chat message, posting a reply, calling an HTTP endpoint, running an AI agent, or querying Data Explorer.
- Utilities control the flow itself by setting delays, looping over items, and setting variables, and can help document the workflow with sticky notes.
Each node’s parameters support literal values and dynamic expressions, so you can reference the output of any previous node, workflow variables, or execution context from an earlier step in a later step.
Variables, data tables, and credentials
Workflows includes a few additional tools for easier creation and management of their output:
- Variables are stored key/value pairs (e.g., group IDs, category IDs, etc.) that are readily available across all workflows for easier configuration.
- Credentials are where you can store reusable authentication configuration for HTTP request nodes, so you don’t need to paste API keys into your workflows.
- Data tables are used for storing and querying runtime data, so you can track executions (e.g., see whether a workflow has already run on a specific topic) and reference the output of a workflow easily.
Execution logs
Every workflow run produces a full log in the Executions tab. You can see which nodes ran, what data they received, what they output, and where a workflow stopped if something went wrong.
Previewing Workflows
For now, this is considered an experimental change! We’re welcoming your feedback, which will help us make improvements and roll this out further.
To try it out, go to Upcoming changes at /admin/config/upcoming-changes, find the Enable Discourse workflows item, and update the Enabled for… field to opt your site in.
Once enabled, you’ll find Workflows under Plugins → Workflows in your admin area.
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(just joking)
