Introduction

Once your users have connected their third-party app accounts in the Connect Portal, you can build workflows that connect data between your application and your users' apps. Paragon's visual workflow builder allows you to create custom integrations that your users can activate in their integrations.

Paragon Workflows provide a visual abstraction layer on top of third-party APIs, making it easy to build integrations without specific knowledge of each API provider. Workflows consist of a trigger, which determines how a workflow is initiated, and steps, which represent an action that's performed as part of the workflow.

Here are some common step types that can get you started building workflows:

• ​Integration actions - perform an action in your users' connected app account, like sending a Slack message or querying contacts from Salesforce

• ​Requests - make a request to any API, such as posting data to your application server

• ​Functions - write your own code to transform data or perform custom business logic

• ​Conditionals - add conditional branching logic to your workflows

• ​Fan Out - iterate over an array and run a series of steps over each array item

Along with the Connect API, Workflows are one of two primary ways to build integrations with Paragon.

When to use Workflows

In general, Workflows are the way that most integrations are built with Paragon. When deciding when to use Workflows or the Connect API, Workflows are often best suited for common use cases including:

• Pushing data from your application to your users' apps

• Receiving new or updated data from your users' apps (Webhooks)

• Allowing your users to configure integration options with custom fields

• Enabling non-engineering teams (e.g. Product or Client Services teams) to configure integrations without writing code

Here are some common examples of specific Workflows for a few integrations:

• Slack - Send notifications from your application to Slack

• Salesforce - Sync contacts from your application to Salesforce

• HubSpot - Sync contacts HubSpot to your application

• Google Calendar - Create Google Calendar events from events in your application

Workflows and the Connect Portal

Workflows that you've deployed for an integration will appear in that integration's Connect Portal under the Configuration tab.

There, your users can choose which workflows they want to activate for that integration. You can also provide options for your users to configure their workflow settings. For example, if you have a Slack workflow that sends notifications to your users' workspaces, you may want to provide them the option of which Slack channel they want to send notifications to.

See Workflow User Settings for an overview of how to provide user-facing options for your users to configure their workflow settings.

What's Next

Throughout the articles in this section, we'll provide a detailed overview of how to start building your own Workflows in Paragon.