Important concepts in Shopify Flow
Shopify Flow is an ecommerce automation platform that enables you to automate tasks and processes within your store and across your apps by creating workflows using triggers, conditions, and actions.
Working with Shopify Flow is easier with knowledge of important concepts such as the GraphQL Admin API, working with data from your store and metafields, defining variables with Liquid, and building advanced workflows with schedules, get data, and looping.
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GraphQL Admin API
Flow uses the GraphQL Admin API (currently version 2024-04
) to evaluate conditions and variables in workflows as well as take actions in your Shopify store. As you create workflows, you will often encounter field names and descriptions based on the API. Because Shopify releases new API versions every three months, some workflows might need to be updated if fields are changed or deprecated.
Store data
Workflows use data from your store in conditions and actions. Flow accesses store data using the Admin API, which means you have access to nearly all the fields in the API. If an action that doesn't have the necessary data provided by the trigger or a Get data action, then the workflow doesn't run and an error message is displayed. For example, a workflow that starts with a Customer created trigger imports customer data into the workflow but if followed with an Add order tags action, which requires order data and not customer data, then the workflow will result in a missing data error.
Variables
Variables are placeholders defined in Liquid that are replaced with values from the Admin API when a workflow runs. Variables can describe the attributes of the customers, orders, and products that are involved in your workflows such as the order number, order price, customer name, and so on. Variables can be used in conditions to control the logic in your workflow, or to output data from an action.
Schedules, get data, and looping
In most cases, you can build a workflow by linking together multiple conditions and actions to a trigger that runs when an event happens. For some use cases, you might find that no trigger exists for what you need to do, or you need it to run at a certain time, or you may need to work with a list of data. Shopify Flow provides actions to support schedules, get data, and looping.
Metafields
Metafields are custom fields that you can use to add extra information to your products, customers, orders, and other objects in your store. Metafields can be used to store information that isn't included in the default fields of an object. For example, you can use metafields to store information about a product's manufacturer, a customer's birthday, or an order's delivery date.
Plans & pricing
Shopify Flow is a free app available on the Basic, Shopify, Advanced, and Plus plans. Although most Shopify Flow features are available across all plans, there are some features that are accessible only to certain plans:
- Stores on the Shopify, Advanced, and Plus plans can use the Send HTTP Request action.
- Stores on the Plus plan can use tasks created by custom partner apps.
- Stores are given different usage limits in Shopify Flow according to the API limits governed by their plan.
For more information about the features that are available on each plan, refer to Shopify plans and pricing.
Protected data
Learn about personally identifiable information (PII) and how to handle it securely.