What starts a run

A workflow does nothing until something starts it, and each start makes one run. Here is what can start one. A run does the steps of the workflow, and its page shows what each step did.

Run it yourself on the website

1. Open Workflows, then the workflow.
2. Press Run now. The dialog Run this workflow asks for the inputs of the workflow.
3. Press Start the run. The run is real: it sends the mails and writes the rows that its steps send and write.

Some workflows need your agent for one of their steps. On those, the button is Start in a chat: it gives you a sentence to paste into your chat, and the agent starts the run there.

Run it from your chat

Ask your agent, for example: “Run the Weekly summary workflow.” The agent starts the run and tells you when it ends. Every run that your agent starts is on the website too.

Let an automation start it

This is where a workflow starts to work without you. An automation starts a workflow by itself, on one of these:

• a schedule, for example every weekday at 7:00;
• a new email in a Gmail or Outlook mailbox that you connected;
• a webhook, which another service calls;
• a form entry, which your form service sends, or which a person enters on a form page that Toolscaled hosts;
• the end of another workflow’s run.

A form page that Toolscaled hosts keeps junk out with a Cloudflare check that the visitor is a person, a hidden field that only bots fill in, and two limits for each form: 10 entries a minute, and a daily total. Ask your agent to change the entries a minute, from 1 to 600.

When an email starts the run, the automation can send the result as a reply in the same thread, in Gmail and in Outlook. In Outlook the reply goes to the sender, or to everyone on the email when you ask for reply all.

Ask your agent to make one, for example: “Run the Weekly summary workflow every Monday at 9:00.” Nothing runs until the automation is on.

On the website, Automations lists them. On the page of an automation:

• Turn on starts it.
• Pause stops it for a time. It asks why you pause it.
• Turn off, under the menu More, stops it until you turn it on again.
• Archive, under More, takes it out of the list.
• To delete an archived automation, see Delete an archived automation.

Is it running as scheduled? says how to see what an automation did.

Start from a webhook or a form

A webhook or a form start gives you an address. Another service sends each event to it, and each event starts one run.

1. Ask your agent, for example: “Start the Lead intake workflow when our website form posts to Toolscaled.” The agent makes the event source and the automation. On the website, you can also open Connections, press Add connection, choose An event source, choose the kind Webhook or Form, and press Connect it.
2. The page of the event source shows the card Copy this now one time. Copy the signing secret (webhook) or the form token (form), and keep it in the service that sends the events. Rotate secret gives a new one.
3. The card Where to send events shows the address. Set the other service to send each event as a POST with a JSON body to that address.

A webhook request needs three headers:

• X-Toolscaled-Timestamp: the time you send it, in UTC (RFC 3339). Toolscaled refuses a request older than five minutes.
• X-Toolscaled-Signature: HMAC-SHA256 in lowercase hex, with the signing secret as the key, over the timestamp, a dot, and the body exactly as sent.
• X-Toolscaled-Event-Id: one id for each event. A request that repeats an id counts once.

A form request needs one header, X-Toolscaled-Form-Token, with the form token. Each form entry is a new event, also when two entries are the same.

Toolscaled answers 202 with an event_id when it takes the event. The fields of the JSON body become the data of the event: the agent maps them to the inputs of the workflow, for example the field email to the input email.

Put a form on your site

Toolscaled can host the form itself: a page with your fields and a button, which you show on your own site, for example at the end of each blog post or on a contact page. Each entry starts one run.

1. Ask your agent, for example: “Make a subscribe form with an email field for my blog, and start the Welcome mail workflow for each entry.” The agent makes a form event source with a page, and the automation.
2. The agent answers with the page address and an iframe line. The page of the event source on the website shows both too, in the card Where to send events, with Copy.
3. Paste the iframe line into your site where the form goes.

A page has a title, an optional short text, one to twelve fields (an email address, one line of text, or several lines), a button, and the text a person reads after the entry. Ask your agent to change any of them. The page takes entries from anyone, without the form token. A hidden field and the rate limits keep bots out, and each entry counts toward the event source’s daily allowance.

Start after another workflow

An automation can start a workflow when a run of another workflow ends. The second workflow gets the inputs and the result of the first run.

Ask your agent, for example: “When the Lead intake workflow finishes, start the Welcome mail workflow.” On the website, open the automation, then the section Connect workflow events: choose When a workflow finishes and press Connect this event. A chain stops after three runs, so two workflows cannot start each other without end.