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Zoho Flow: A platform for integrating and connecting cloud applications!

Introduction 

Zoho Flow is a platform for integrating and connecting cloud applications. In other words, it is a web tool for connecting business apps to produce powerful workflows and application pipelines. Zoho Flow empowers you to create the solutions that work best for your business. You can modify and adjust your flows as business processes change, and as your organization advances. Develop on-the-fly tools for ad-hoc data processing, or construct robust routines for daily use. Zoho Flow helps you solve your problems your way.

 

Triggers

Triggers are used to respond to an event, and you can create triggers to associate anything with an event.  Automate complex business workflows within minutes by setting a trigger, adding actions, and using ‘delays’ and ‘decisions’ to create your entire workflow on the easy-to-use builder.

There are 3 main types of triggers available in Zoho Flow –

  • Application trigger: This type gets triggered when an event occurs within an app. To add app events, you’ll need to create a new connection between Zoho Flow and the app when prompted.

  • Schedule trigger: It triggers at a specific time and date, set dynamically or static, repeating or not.

  • Webhook trigger: This type of trigger only activates after receiving a specific API message. It is the most configurable, yet also the most specialized and complex.

 

Actions

Actions are a combination of custom pages and custom scripts that are used to include tailored actions in workflow rules. Actions let you add workflow to your application along with those available by default (alerts, tasks, field updates, webhooks, and custom functions). It also helps you build customizations that include provisions for the end users to apply personalizations.

The following are the types of Actions present in Zoho Flow:

  • App-based actions: It takes the specified action within the connected app based on your trigger.

  • Logic-based actions: It makes decisions programmatically based on data within the workflow and trigger.

 
Role of Zoho Flow in Business

Zoho Flow can increase the productivity of your business with the following:

1) Dynamic Integrations: Zoho Flow comes with a builder that removes hassle and confusion from building workflows. It has a drag-and-drop interface that brings all applications together only within a few seconds while giving a flowchart view of all steps involved in the integration.

In addition, Zoho Flow includes handy editing tools so that one can quickly adapt to workflow changes in a business. The dynamic integrations make business workflow automation much easier.

2) Customizing Workflows: Any efficient business needs extensive workflow management. By using the powerful logic elements of Zoho Flow, it is possible to introduce ‘if-then’ decision branches for carrying out tasks in tandem or defining time intervals between the tasks.

For fine-tuning the workflows to custom business requirements, one can create functions with Deluge with an easy-to-use scripting language.

3) Tracking History: The history interface that is offered by Zoho Flow helps in digging through all the Flow executions to identify when and how a problem has occurred.

The tracking history registers timestamps for every trigger and action that is involved in the Flows and keeps you informed about all details.

4) Pre-prepared Flows: Zoho Flow also hosts a comprehensive set of around 200 pre-built flows, spanning across 100+ business applications that it supports.

One can either install or use these Flows just as they are or make simple edits to tailor them to your needs.

5) Workflow Insights: The dashboard in Zoho Flow offers a bird’s eye view of all the business workflows, which further helps in analyzing them from just one place.

One can view the list of top flows in an account, the number of lives, paused and drafted flows, execution details, and success rate.

Summary

Zoho Flow is a great way to bring about efficient business workflow automation as it ties all apps together and frees up your time. By connecting, automating, and orchestrating everyday tasks to detailed workflows, all business tasks can run effectively.

In case you want to implement Zoho Flow and need support, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us anytime at hello@clientric.co. We always love to help Zoho enthusiasts!

 

 

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