Workflow triggers, conditions, and actions
Understand Flow's trigger, condition, and action logic so that you can create efficient workflows to automate your business processes.
Triggers
Triggers are events that start workflows. Triggers can be internal events in Shopify, or events within a third-party application. You cannot manually start a workflow. For each trigger, there is a list of related conditions and actions that you can use in your workflow.
Conditions
Conditions start actions only when certain conditions are met. Conditions are like the start of an if-then statement. They can check against the properties of the trigger event as well as properties of objects that are involved in the event, such as orders, products, and customers.
Conditions can check simple yes/no properties, such as whether an order's total is above a certain amount, or whether a customer accepts marketing.
They can also check for more complex properties that check against strings or decimals. A string property is a selection of text, and a decimal property is a number. For example:
- You can create a condition that checks an order's country string by using the
is any ofoperator to take an action on orders from Canada, Ireland, or Chile. - You can create a condition that checks the decimal property of a customer's total purchases in your store by using the
greater than or equal tooperator to take an action on customers that have spent $100 or more.
Actions
Actions are tasks that can make changes to objects in your Shopify store as well as in apps. Actions can also send emails, Slack messages, and make HTTP WebHook calls to external services.
When you choose an action for your workflow to perform, your choices are filtered based on the workflow's trigger.
Ordering conditions
You can create workflows that have multiple conditions, each of which can result in different actions. The order of the conditions matters. Conditions are checked from the top down and the checking stops after a condition is met.
Combining conditions and actions
You can combine conditions together to make one large condition. When conditions are combined, all conditions must be met for the whole condition to be true. If any condition is not met, then the whole condition is false. In the following example, the customer must accept marketing materials and the total price of the order must be greater than $1000.
Similarly, you can combine actions together so that multiple actions can run.
The following example uses multiple conditions to check if a customer is eligible for a loyalty program based on the total amount that they have spent in the store.
In the image above, the following conditions are checked in the order in which they appear:
- If the total price is greater than $1000 and the customer agreed to accept marketing materials, then tag them with the Gold loyalty tag.
- If the total price is less than $1000 but more than $500 and the customer agreed to accept marketing materials, then tag them with the Silver loyalty tag.
- If the customer has spent more than $200 and the customer agreed to accept marketing materials, then tag them with the Bronze loyalty tag.
Reference
List of Shopify triggers
You can use the following triggers in your workflows.
Customer triggers
- Customer created
Order triggers
- Draft order created
- Order created (This trigger runs whenever an order is created, including when an order is created because it was converted from a draft order.)
- Order fulfilled
- Order paid
- Order risk analyzed (This trigger and its conditions refer to the Shopify Risk Analysis results only. Results from third-party fraud analysis apps do not apply. Learn more about analyzing risk workflows.)
- Refund created
Product triggers
- Product created
- Inventory quantity changed (This trigger runs when the inventory level changes for a product that is tracked by Shopify. Learn more about inventory tracking workflows.)
Actions for order triggers
You can use the following Shopify actions in triggers that involve orders, such as Order created, Order fulfilled, Order paid, Order risk analyzed, and Refund created:
- Add customer tags
- Add order tags
- Archive order
- Cancel order (Learn more about canceling orders using workflows.)
- Capture payment (Learn more about capturing payment workflows.)
- Remove customer tags
- Remove order tags
- Unarchive order
- Update customer note (By default, this action replaces the contents of the note. If you want to add content to the existing note, then in the Note field, enter:
{{customer.note}} The content that you want to add to the note.) - Update order note (By default, this action replaces the contents of the note. If you want to add content to the existing note, then in the Note field, enter:
{{order.note}} The content that you want to add to the note.)
You can use the following Shopify actions with for triggers that involve draft orders, such as Draft order created:
- Add customer tags
- Add draft order tags (After a draft order is converted to an order, these tags are order tags.)
- Remove customer tags
- Remove draft order tags
- Update draft order note (By default, this action replaces the contents of the note. If you want to add content to the existing note, then in the Note field, enter:
{{order.note}} The content that you want to add to the note.)
Actions for product triggers
You can use the following Shopify actions with triggers that involve products, such as Inventory quantity changed and Product added:
- Add product tags
- Hide products
- Publish product
- Remove product tags
Actions for customer triggers
You can use the following Shopify actions with triggers that involve customers, such as Customer created:
- Add customer tags
- Remove customer tags
- Update customer note (By default, this action replaces the contents of the note. If you want to add content to the existing note, then in the Note field, enter:
{{customer.note}} The content that you want to add to the note.)
Actions that send messages
You can add an action to any workflow to send a message to you or your staff.