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Workflow automation

Build automations three ways: from a free template, by describing them to AI, or from a blank canvas. Learn triggers, actions, variables, activation, and the executions log.

9 min read · Reviewed 2026-07-13

A workflow watches for something to happen in your data and then does something about it. New lead arrives, welcome email goes out. Deal goes quiet, a check-in task appears. This guide covers building one, wiring data through it, turning it on, and reading what it actually did.

Where workflows live

Go to /admin/automation, heading Automation. It has two tabs: Workflows and Pipeline. This article is about the Workflows tab. (The Pipeline tab is covered in sales-pipeline.)

Three stats cards sit at the top — Total Workflows, Active, Inactive — and below them each workflow is a card with an Active/Inactive switch, an inline-editable name, and two buttons: Editor and Execs.

Three ways to create a workflow

The create dialog offers you three doors. They are not equivalent — the middle one costs credits, the other two don't.

Try the template shelf before you spend a credit: There are eight templates and they cover the automations most teams build first. Starting from one is free and lands you with a working structure you can edit — often faster than describing what you want.

The template library

Eight templates, all free to use:

• Welcome new leads — send a welcome email shortly after a lead is created
• Qualified lead alert — notify sales when a lead's status becomes qualified
• Follow-up task for new leads — create a follow-up task on lead creation
• New deal kickoff — email the team the moment a new deal is created
• Stale deal nudge — wait, then create a check-in task on a quiet deal
• Meeting confirmation — email a confirmation when a calendar event is created
• Sync leads to another tool — push new leads out over HTTP
• AI lead brief — have AI write up a lead for whoever picks it up

Triggers: what starts a workflow

A trigger fires on create, update, or delete of one of four record types: Lead, Deal, Task, or Calendar Event. That's the surface. Pick the record and pick the event, and everything downstream hangs off it.

Stage changes are not a workflow trigger: If you want something to happen when a deal enters or leaves a specific pipeline stage, build it as a stage automation in the Pipeline Stage Editor (On Stage Entry (ENTRY) / On Stage Exit (EXIT)), not here. See sales-pipeline.

Actions: what a workflow does

Nine action types, grouped in the picker under Customer & Deal Records, Customer Messages, Rules & Timing, Utility, and Smart Tools & Integrations.

Condition and Delay are what turn a list of steps into an actual process. A Condition branches Yes / No, so one workflow can treat a hot lead and a cold one differently. A Delay lets you wait three days before nudging, rather than nagging someone the second they go quiet.

Variables: getting data into your steps

A workflow is only useful if its steps can see the record that triggered it. Two variable forms do that.

That second form is the one people miss. It's how an AI step's output becomes the body of a Send Email step, or how an HTTP Request response decides a later Condition. Steps chain.

Every workflow is created paused

Nothing you build runs until you say so. New workflows — however you created them — arrive inactive. You turn one on with the switch on its card.

Before flipping that switch, Clyentra checks the workflow is actually runnable and refuses if it isn't:

• "This workflow has no trigger yet — open it and pick what starts it before activating."
• "This workflow has no actions yet — add at least one step before activating."

There is no test or simulate button: You cannot dry-run a workflow. The real test is to activate it and watch the first execution in Execs. Because of that, activate on a low-stakes trigger first, or point the first version at a lead you created yourself.

Build your first workflow

1. Open `/admin/automation` → `Workflows` and create one. Take Start from a template for your first — it's free and it gives you a working shape.
2. Open the `Editor`. The card's Editor button opens the canvas. Check the trigger, then check each action.
3. Wire in your data. Replace placeholders with real variables — {{entity_data.email}} for the lead's address, {{entity_data.first_name}} in the greeting.
4. Add a Condition or a Delay if the process needs one. "Wait 3 days, then if still not contacted, create a task" is a Delay followed by a Condition.
5. Activate it. Flip the switch on the card. If Clyentra objects, it's because you're missing a trigger or an action — fix that and try again.
6. Watch the first run in `Execs`. This is your test. Don't walk away until you've seen one execution come back Success.

Executions: what actually happened

The Execs button opens Executions — {workflow name}. Every run lands here with a status: Success, Failed, Stopped, Delayed, or Running. (Delayed is not a problem — it's a workflow sitting inside a Delay step, waiting.)

Open a run and you get Input Data (what the trigger handed the workflow), Output Data (what each step produced), and, when something broke, an Error Trace. Two controls sit alongside: Retry Execution and Stop Execution.

Debug from Input Data, not from the canvas: When a step behaves strangely, the usual culprit is a variable that resolved to nothing. Input Data shows you exactly what the trigger delivered — if the field you referenced isn't in there, your {{entity_data.…}} path is wrong.

Editing with AI

The builder has an Edit with AI control — "Describe a change in plain words — 5 credits per drafted change". Ask it to add a step, change a condition, or restructure a branch, and it drafts it.

Two things worth knowing. First, asking questions is free — only a *drafted change* costs the 5 credits. You can interrogate a workflow you inherited without spending anything. Second, AI drafts arrive paused: "This is created as a paused draft — nothing runs until you review it and switch it on." The model never puts something live behind your back.

For what credits cost and how to top them up, see ai-credits.

Where workflows fit

Workflows sit at the end of the capture chain. A form or booking page creates the lead (forms-and-booking), routing puts a name on it (lead-routing), and a workflow does the first thing that needs doing — the welcome email, the follow-up task, the alert to the rep — before a human has read a single row. See leads-and-customers for what the lead record looks like on the other side.