Workflow Management
Conditional Branching
How to create decision paths in your workflows
Depending on data received in previous steps of your workflow, you may want to decide how to proceed further. Two actions help you split your workflow based on conditions:
Alongside the data fields, there’s a combo box that defines the specific operation for your condition. See Operators for details.
Here’s an example of a complete condition that takes a list from a previous action and checks if the list contains any actions — in other words, if its length is more than zero:
As shown in the screenshot above, you can test your condition in the Step output pane and verify if the result is as expected.
Each condition in the Split properties pane has one or more data fields and a combo box to define the operator.
Unlike the Condition action, Split only allows one condition per branch, meaning you can’t define complex conditions using And or Or operators.
OpenOps provides 20+ operators applicable to several types of data: text (strings), numbers, boolean values, lists, and dates.
Here’s the complete list of operators along with their additional settings:
All text operators provide a setting to toggle case sensitivity. All other operators come without additional settings.
This displays the Tree view pane on the left of the editor — a great way to see a compact representation of your workflow, including conditions and branches:
- Condition splits the workflow into exactly two branches.
- Split splits the workflow into multiple branches.
Condition
The Condition action splits the workflow into exactly two branches. One is executed if one or multiple conditions that you specify are satisfied, and the other is executed otherwise. Think of this as the equivalent of anif statement in programming.
If you choose the Condition action, the properties pane on the right lets you define the condition. By default, there’s only one condition, but you can combine multiple conditions with logical conjunction (click And) or disjunction (click Or).
Every condition contains one or two data fields. Clicking a data field opens the Data Selector view, allowing you to select output from any of your prior actions:
Alongside the data fields, there’s a combo box that defines the specific operation for your condition. See Operators for details.
Here’s an example of a complete condition that takes a list from a previous action and checks if the list contains any actions — in other words, if its length is more than zero:
As shown in the screenshot above, you can test your condition in the Step output pane and verify if the result is as expected.
Split
The Split action splits the workflow into multiple branches. Each branch executes if its specific condition is met. An extra branch, called the default branch, executes if none of the conditions specified for other branches is satisfied. Every condition should be unique: if conditions in multiple branches are satisfied, this results in a workflow failure. Think of this action as the equivalent of aswitch statement in programming.
Each condition in the Split properties pane has one or more data fields and a combo box to define the operator.
Unlike the Condition action, Split only allows one condition per branch, meaning you can’t define complex conditions using And or Or operators.
Operators
When you define conditions using the Condition or Split actions, you need to specify what operation to apply to the value(s) you supply. The combo box alongside the data fields lets you do just that:
OpenOps provides 20+ operators applicable to several types of data: text (strings), numbers, boolean values, lists, and dates.
Here’s the complete list of operators along with their additional settings:
| Data type | Operator |
|---|---|
| Text | Contains |
| Text | Does not contain |
| Text | Is |
| Text | Is not |
| Text | Starts with |
| Text | Does not start with |
| Text | Ends with |
| Text | Does not end with |
| Number | Is greater than |
| Number | Is less than |
| Number | Is equal to |
| Boolean | Is true |
| Boolean | Is false |
| All data types | Exists |
| All data types | Does not exist |
| List | Is empty |
| List | Is not empty |
| List | Length is greater than |
| List | Length is less than |
| List | Length is equal to |
| List | Contains |
| List | Does not contain |
| Date | Is before |
| Date | Is after |
Exploring conditional branches in large workflows
If you’re dealing with a large workflow with many conditional branches and are having trouble navigating between them, click Tree view in the top control pane of the workflow editor:
This displays the Tree view pane on the left of the editor — a great way to see a compact representation of your workflow, including conditions and branches: