Module · The Builder
The canvas
Lesson 4 of 9 · 6 min
Every workflow in this course is built on one screen. It looks busier than it is: there is a list of nodes you can add, a space to arrange them in, and a panel that opens when you want to configure one. Everything else is a detail of those three.
The six things
| What it is | What you do with it |
|---|---|
| The palette | |
| The canvas | |
| A connection | |
| The configuration panel | |
| The toolbar | |
| The activation toggle |
The palette
- What you do with it
The canvas
- What you do with it
A connection
- What you do with it
The configuration panel
- What you do with it
The toolbar
- What you do with it
The activation toggle
- What you do with it
The configuration panel is where you will live
Three columns, and the two you did not expect are the useful ones.
- The middle is the node's settings — the fields each lesson in this course is about.
- The left shows what is arriving from upstream. After a run it also shows the actual values that arrived, which is the fastest way to answer “why is this field empty”.
- The right shows what this node will produce, and whether it is configured well enough to run. Reading it before you run something saves a run.
Every node has a short name, shown in its panel — crmmanager_1, response_1, trigger_1. That name is how other nodes refer to its results, and you will type it constantly. It is generated when you add the node and it does not change when you rename things, which is deliberate: your references keep working.
Three buttons that are not what they look like
At the top of an open node there are three actions, and the middle one is the one worth knowing early:
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| Run | |
| Run From Here | |
| Save |
Run
- What it does
Run From Here
- What it does
Save
- What it does
The habits worth forming now
- Save before you run. Always. It removes an entire category of confusing result.
- Check the workflow is ready before activating. The builder can tell you which nodes are not yet configured well enough to run, which is faster than finding out from a failed execution.
- Then actually activate it. A saved workflow is not a running workflow. If a trigger seems to do nothing at all — no run, no error, nothing in the history — check this before anything else.
- Name your workflows like a colleague will read them. You will have thirty of these. “Lead intake — task + email” is findable; “Workflow 12” is not.
What breaks
Nodes that are on the canvas but not connected do not run. They look identical to connected ones at a glance, and a workflow missing one step because a line was never drawn is a common first-week experience. Follow the lines, not the boxes.
The canvas does not tell you the order. Position means nothing. A node further right does not run later; the connections decide, and a workflow can look tidy while doing something entirely different from what its layout suggests. When in doubt, read the run rather than the picture.
Try it
- Open the builder, create an empty workflow, and find each of the six things named above. Do not configure anything.
- Drag any node onto the canvas, open it, and read all three columns. Note its short name.
- Delete it, and notice that the workflow is now empty and still saved. Nothing here is destructive by accident.
Next: Build it yourself — a new lead comes in, and a task appears. Two nodes and one connection.