Build an automation that runs on its own

01What a routine is made of

An automation has three parts. A schedule that starts it, the cards you placed in the order you want them to happen, and whatever comes out at the end. You build the middle part yourself on a canvas, and the schedule is what turns it from something you press into something that happens without you.

The example above is a real one you could build in a few minutes, and it is worth picking something that small for your first try. A routine you can check in one glance teaches you more than an ambitious one that fails somewhere in the middle.

02Build it on the canvas

A workflow is a set of cards on a canvas, joined in the order you want them to run. The panel on the left has All, Tools, Apps and AI filters. Tools includes inputs, outputs, dates, calculations, HTTP requests and code. Apps groups integrations and information services. AI groups speech, vision and language models. Search by name to find a card, then configure its available action.

Three tabs sit along the top. Editor is the canvas itself, and the only place you can add, move or join cards — try it from another tab and the app tells you to switch back. Runs is where you start the workflow and watch what happened. Interface builds a small screen of buttons and readouts for the workflow, and you can leave it alone until the rest works.

1. 1

   Create the workflow

   Choose New workflow from the workflow list or home page. Enter a name and an optional description. Private is selected by default. Public only makes it eligible for publication: it shares nothing until you explicitly publish an app. Select Create to open the saved canvas.

2. 2

   Place your first card

   Drag a row from the panel onto the canvas, or use the small plus on the row to drop it in the middle of the view. To find a card by name, type in the search box at the top of the panel.

3. 3

   Join it to the next one

   Hover over the edge of the first card. A connector appears. Drag from it to the second card and let go anywhere on that card. Joining only works on the Editor tab, so if a connector will not appear, check which tab you are on.

4. 4

   Fill in what each card needs

   Select a card to open its settings. Anything that talks to another service, such as Telegram or Notion, needs that service connected first in Settings, then Connections. A card with nothing filled in is the most common reason a first run fails.

A decision is not a card. It lives on the line between two cards: select the line and set its condition in the panel on the right, so the card it points at only runs when the condition holds. The same panel gives you a fallback line for when it does not. When one step has to branch three or more ways, the Switch card in Core does that in a single box instead of a pile of lines.

Your changes save on their own as you work, so there is no save button to hunt for. A few keys make the canvas much quicker once you know them.

/

Put your cursor straight in the palette search box

Ctrl K · ⌘ K

Jump to a card already on the canvas, or run a command such as switching tab

Ctrl S · ⌘ S

Save right now instead of waiting for the automatic save

F

Fit everything on screen, or frame just the card you have selected

R

Run all, on the Runs tab

⌘ ↩

Run only the card you have selected

03Run it yourself first

Switch to the Runs tab at the top of the workflow. The toolbar there gains the run controls. Run all starts the whole workflow. Run focused node runs only the card you have selected, which is the quicker way to fix one step. While it is running, Pause holds it and Stop ends it.

The Runs tab keeps the runs recorded by the browser editor. Open a run to inspect its steps and errors. Scheduled and cloud runs are reported through Notifications; they are not merged into this browser history.

The cloud button in that same row sends one run to our servers instead of your browser. That run carries on after you close the tab, and you are told when it finishes. It is the same engine a schedule uses, so it is a good way to check that your workflow survives away from your machine.

04Put it on a schedule

1. 1

   Open the alarm button

   It sits in the same row of run controls, on the Runs tab. It opens a small panel called Scheduled routine.

2. 2

   Choose how often it should run

   Every 15 minutes, every hour, every day at a time you pick, every Monday at a time you pick, or a custom cron expression if you know them. The daily and weekly choices show a time field once you select them.

3. 3

   Select Enable routine

   From then on the workflow runs on our servers to that timetable, whether or not your browser is open, and whether or not your computer is even switched on.

4. 4

   Come back and check on it

   Reopen the panel to see ACTIVE and the last-run time, if present. An existing cadence is shown as Custom cron. Select Update after changing it. To remove the routine, select the bin and then Confirm; the workflow itself remains saved.

A scheduled run leaves a notification when it completes or fails. Open Notifications to find the result and link back to the workflow. The scheduling panel shows the last trigger time, not the run status or next-run prediction.

05What your plan allows

Two separate ceilings apply to automations, and it helps to keep them apart. One is how many workflows you can keep and how many routines you can have switched on. The other is the monthly task allowance that the whole product draws on.

Running a workflow draws on the same monthly allowance as everything else you do here. The count goes back to zero on the 1st of each month, and there is no daily limit on top of it. A routine every 15 minutes is roughly 2900 runs a month before a single card of yours does anything, so a busy cadence is worth a second thought on Free.

Your home page shows all of this in one row, under Workflows, Active workflows and Operations / mo. Settings, then Billing, shows your operations, workflows and storage against the plan you are on, and is where you move up if you have run out of room.