Build your first workflow

Build, test, and improve a small workflow of your own, then check the result against the outcome you described.

Objective: Build a small workflow from your brief, make one focused change, and check the result against the outcome you described.

Build from your brief

You can understand a workflow, you know how it gets from draft to live, and you have a brief. Now you'll use all three: build your workflow, test it, make one change, and check it against your brief.

Don't expect the first build to be perfect. Building in Tines 3B is a conversation: you ask, check what comes back, and say what to change.

By the end of this lesson, you'll have a working workflow on a draft, and a way to check that it does what you meant.

What a first build process looks like

Switch to your Tines 3B tenant for the rest of this lesson. If you don't have one yet, you can set one up here.

Let's build!

Keep your brief from lesson 3 open, then follow these steps.

Open the space where you want your workflow to live. Your personal space is a good place for a first build.

In the chat composer, turn on Plan mode.

Paste your brief and send it.

Read the plan. Does it answer all six questions from your brief? If something's missing or wrong, say what to change. When it matches your brief, select Approve and build.

Watch Tines 3B build. It may stop to ask you a question, or ask before running a step that sends or changes something.

When it's done, test it as if you were the person using it. If your workflow has a webpage, open it in the Browser tab and submit a test request.

Didn't write your own brief, or yours got too big? Copy this one instead:

Build a suggestion box for our team. It starts when a team member submits an idea through a form with their name, a short title, and a description. Ideas appear in a list, newest first, that can be filtered by status (new, planned, done, or declined). The team lead sets the status of each idea from the list. Don't accept an idea without a title. It worked if a test idea appears in the list as new, and changing its status updates the list.

Never paste passwords or API keys into chat. If your workflow needs to reach another tool, Tines 3B will help you set up a connector instead.

What to do when it's not quite right

Make one change and verify it

Make one change to your workflow. Describe it in chat in plain language, let Tines 3B update the draft, and try it again. If you built your own workflow, pick one thing the plan missed or that you'd like to add. If you used the team suggestion box, pick one of these:

Require a short reason when an idea is declined, and show it in the list.

Add a category field to the form, with options like process, tools, and team events.

Show how many ideas are still new at the top of the list.

Then check the result against your brief, not only against how it looks. A list can look right and still show the wrong requests. Go through your brief's six questions:

What starts it? Did your test start a run? In the Runs tab, did your latest run succeed?

What information does it use? Is the workflow using the details you named?

What result does it produce? Does what came out match what you asked for, detail by detail?

Where does a person decide? Can the right person still make the decision, such as setting an idea's status?

What are its limits? Try an edge case, like submitting the form with a required field left blank. Did your limit hold?

How will you know it worked? By the definition of "worked" in your brief, did it?

If every check passes, your change took effect and your workflow does what you meant.

You don't need to push your workflow live to finish this learning path.

When you're ready to share it, select Push live in the branch selector. If the button is disabled, you don't have permission to push live in that space. Ask whoever manages the space to give you access, or to push it live for you.

What to do if something still feels fuzzy

You started this learning path by watching Tines 3B build a workflow. Now you've built one yourself: you wrote a brief, checked the plan, tested the result against what you asked for, and made a change. Use the same steps for whatever you build next in Tines 3B.