NocoBase

Posted on Mar 27

NocoBase 2.0 Beginner Tutorial - Chapter 6: Workflows

#ai #nocode #opensource #tutorial

Originally published at https://docs.nocobase.com/tutorials/v2/06-workflows

Chapter 6: Workflows — Let the System Do the Work

In the last chapter, we added permissions so different roles see different content. But all operations are still done manually — when a new ticket comes in, someone has to go check; when a status changes, nobody gets notified.

In this chapter, we'll use NocoBase's Workflow engine to make the system do things automatically — configure condition checks and update nodes for automatic ticket status transitions and timestamp recording.

6.1 What Is a Workflow?

A workflow is a set of automated "if... then..." rules.

Think of it like an alarm on your phone that goes off every morning at 8 AM. That alarm is the simplest workflow — when a condition is met (it's 8 AM), an action executes automatically (the alarm rings).

NocoBase workflows follow the same idea:

Trigger: The entry point for the workflow. For example, "someone created a new ticket" or "a record was updated"
Condition: An optional filtering step. For example, "only continue if the assignee is not empty"
Action: The step that does the actual work. For example, "send a notification" or "update a field"

Actions can be chained with multiple nodes. Common node types include:

Flow control: Condition, Parallel branch, Loop, Delay
Data operations: Create record, Update record, Query record, Delete record
Notifications & external: Notification, HTTP request, Calculation

This tutorial only covers a few of the most common ones — once you learn to combine them, you'll be able to handle most scenarios.

Trigger Types at a Glance

NocoBase offers several trigger types, which you select when creating a workflow:

Trigger	Description	Typical Use Case
Collection event	Fires when a record is created, updated, or deleted	New ticket notification, status change logging
Schedule	Fires on a Cron expression or fixed time	Daily reports, periodic data cleanup
Post-action event	Fires after a user performs a UI action	Send notification after form submission
Approval	Initiates an approval flow with multi-level support	Leave requests, purchase approvals
Custom action	Bound to a custom button, fires on click	One-click archiving, batch operations
Pre-action event	Intercepts a user action synchronously before it completes	Pre-submit validation, auto-fill fields
AI Employee	Exposes the workflow as a tool for AI employees to call	AI-driven business operations

This tutorial uses both Collection event and Custom action event triggers. The other types work similarly; once you've learned these, you can pick up the rest quickly.

NocoBase workflows are a built-in plugin — no extra installation needed, ready to use out of the box.

6.2 Scenario 1: Automatically Notify the Assignee on New Tickets

Requirement: When someone creates a new ticket and specifies an assignee, the system automatically sends an in-app message to the assignee, letting them know "there's work to do."

Step 1: Create a Workflow

Open the plugin settings menu in the top-right corner and go to Workflow management.

Click New, and in the dialog that appears:

Name: Enter "Notify assignee on new ticket"
Trigger type: Select Collection event

After submitting, click the Configure link in the list to enter the flow editor.

Step 2: Configure the Trigger

Click the trigger card at the top to open its configuration drawer:

Collection: Select Main datasource / "Tickets"
Trigger on: Select "After record created or updated"
Changed fields: Check "Assignee" — the workflow only triggers when the Assignee field changes, avoiding unnecessary notifications from other field updates (when creating a record, all fields are considered changed, so new tickets will also trigger)
Only triggers when conditions are met: Set the mode to "Match any condition in the group," then add two conditions:
- assignee_id is not empty
- Assignee / ID is not empty

Why two conditions? Because at trigger time, the form may only have the foreign key (assignee_id) without the associated object loaded, or vice versa. Using OR ensures the workflow triggers as long as an assignee is specified.

Preload associations: Check "Assignee" — the notification node needs the assignee's information, so it must be preloaded in the trigger

Click Save. The trigger itself now handles the condition filtering — it only fires when the Assignee is not empty, so there's no need for a separate condition node.

Step 3: Add a Notification Node

Click the + below the trigger and select a Notification node.

Open the notification node's configuration. The first option is to select a Notification channel — but we haven't created one yet, so the dropdown is empty. Let's go create one first.

Step 4: Create a Notification Channel

NocoBase supports multiple notification channel types:

Channel Type	Description
In-app message	Browser notifications, pushed in real-time to the user's notification center
Email	Sends via SMTP, requires email server configuration

For this tutorial, we'll use the simplest option — In-app message:

Open the plugin settings in the top-right corner and go to Notification management
Click Create channel

Select In-app message as the channel type, and enter a name (e.g., "System In-App Messages")
Save

Step 5: Configure the Notification Node

Go back to the workflow editor and open the notification node's configuration.

The notification node has the following configuration options:

Notification channel: Select the "System In-App Messages" channel you just created
Receivers: Click to select Query users → set id = Trigger variable / Trigger data / Assignee / ID
Title: Enter a notification title, e.g., "You have a new ticket to handle." Supports variables — for example, include the ticket title: New ticket: {{Trigger data / Title}}
Content: Enter the notification body. You can also insert variables to reference the ticket's priority, description, and other fields

(Before leaving the popup for the next step, remember to save first!)

Desktop detail page: Enter the URL path of the ticket detail page. To get it: open any ticket's detail popup in the frontend, then copy the path from the browser address bar — it looks like /admin/camcwbox2uc/view/d8f8e122d37/filterbytk/353072988225540. Paste the path into the field, then replace the number after filterbytk/ with the trigger data's ID variable (click the variable selector → Trigger data → ID). Once configured, clicking the notification in the list will navigate directly to that ticket's detail page and automatically mark it as read

Continue on failure: Optional. If checked, the workflow won't stop even if the notification fails to send

After the notification is sent, the assignee can see the message in the Notification center (top-right corner of the page). Unread items will show a red dot indicator. Clicking the notification takes you directly to the ticket detail page.

Step 6: Test and Enable

The complete flow for Scenario 1 has just two nodes: Trigger (with condition filtering) → Notification. Simple and direct.

Don't rush to enable it — workflows provide a manual execution feature that lets you test the flow with specific data first:

Click the Execute button in the top-right corner (not the enable toggle)
Select an existing ticket record as the trigger data

If the ticket selector shows IDs instead of titles, go to Data sources → Collections → Tickets and set the "Title" column as the title field.
Click execute. The workflow will run and automatically switch to a duplicated new version.
Click the three dots in the top-right corner and select Execution history. You should see the execution record we just created. Click to view the details — including trigger info, each node's execution details, and parameters.

The ticket we just tested seems to be assigned to Alice. Let's switch to Alice's account — notification received!

Click the notification to jump to the target ticket page. The notification is automatically marked as read.

Once confirmed, click the On/Off toggle in the top-right corner to enable the workflow.

Note: Once a workflow has been executed (including manual execution), it becomes read-only (grayed out) and can no longer be edited. If you need to make changes, click "Duplicate to new version" in the top-right corner and continue editing the new version. The old version is automatically disabled.

Go back to the tickets page and create a new ticket — make sure to select an assignee. Then switch to the assignee's account and check the notification center — you should see a new notification.

Congratulations, your first automation is up and running!

6.3 Scenario 2: Automatically Record Completion Time

Requirement: When a ticket is marked as "Completed," the system automatically fills in the "Completion time" field with the current time. No manual entry needed, and it never gets forgotten.

If you haven't created a "Completion time" field in the Tickets collection yet, go to Collection management → Tickets and add a Date type field named "Completion time." Refer to Chapter 2 for how to create fields — we won't repeat the steps here.

Step 1: Create a Workflow

Go back to the workflow management page and click New:

Name: Enter "Auto-record ticket completion time"
Trigger type: Select Custom action event (fires when a user clicks a button bound to this workflow)
Execution mode: Synchronous

About synchronous vs asynchronous:

Asynchronous: After the action, you can continue doing other things while the workflow runs in the background

Synchronous: After the action, the UI waits for the workflow to finish before you can do anything else

Step 2: Configure the Trigger

Open the trigger configuration:

Collection: Select "Tickets"
Execution mode: Select Single record mode (processes only the current ticket each time)

Step 3: Add a Condition

Unlike the collection event trigger which has built-in conditions, we need to add a condition node ourselves:

We recommend selecting "Continue on 'Yes' and 'No' separately" for easier future expansion.

Condition: Trigger data → Status does not equal Completed (only incomplete tickets pass through; already completed tickets won't be processed again)

Step 4: Add an Update Record Node

On the "Yes" branch of the condition, click + and select an Update record node:

Collection: Select "Tickets"
Filter condition: ID equals Trigger data → ID (to ensure only the current ticket gets updated)
Field values:
- Status = Completed
- Completion time = System variables / System time

This way, a single node handles both "change status" and "record time" — no need to configure field values on the button separately.

Step 5: Create a "Complete" Action Button

The workflow is configured, but a "Custom action event" needs to be bound to a specific action button to trigger. Let's create a dedicated "Complete" button in the ticket list's action column:

Enter UI Editor mode. In the ticket table's action column, click "+" and select a "Trigger workflow" action button

Click the button settings and change the title to "Complete", then select a completion-related icon (e.g., a checkmark icon)

Configure linkage rules for the button: hide it when the ticket status is already "Completed" (completed tickets don't need a "Complete" button)
- Condition: Current data → Status equals Completed
- Action: Hide

Open "Bind workflows" in the button settings and select the "Auto-record ticket completion time" workflow we just created

Step 6: Configure Event Flow Refresh

The button is created, but the table won't automatically refresh after clicking — users won't see the status change. We need to configure the button's event flow to automatically refresh the table after the workflow completes.

Click the second lightning bolt icon (⚡) in the button settings to open the Event flow configuration
Configure the trigger event:
- Trigger event: Select Click
- Execution timing: Select After all flows
Click "Append step" and select "Refresh target block"

Find the ticket table on the current page, open its settings menu, and click "Copy UID" at the bottom. Paste the UID into the refresh step's target block field

This way, after clicking the "Complete" button, the table automatically refreshes once the workflow finishes, and users immediately see the status and completion time changes.

Step 7: Enable and Test

Go back to the workflow management page and enable the "Auto-record ticket completion time" workflow.

Then open a ticket with "In Progress" status and click the "Complete" button in the action column. You should see:

The ticket's "Completion time" field is automatically filled with the current time
The table refreshes automatically, and the "Complete" button has disappeared for this ticket (linkage rule in effect)

Convenient, right? This is the second common use case for workflows — automatically updating data. And by using the "Custom action event + Button binding" approach, we've created a precise trigger mechanism: the workflow only runs when a specific button is clicked.

6.4 Viewing Execution History

How many times has the workflow run? Were there any errors? NocoBase keeps track of everything.

In the workflow management list, each workflow shows an Execution count link. Click it to see the detailed record of each execution:

Execution status: Success (green) or failure (red) — easy to spot at a glance
Trigger time: When was it triggered
Node details: Click in to see the execution result of each node

If an execution failed, clicking into the details shows which node had the problem and the specific error message. This is the most important tool for debugging workflows.

Summary

In this chapter, we created two simple but practical workflows:

New ticket notification (Collection event trigger): Automatically notifies the assignee when a ticket is created or reassigned — no more yelling across the office
Auto-record completion time (Custom action event trigger): Click "Complete" and the timestamp is filled automatically — no more human oversight

These two workflows demonstrate two different trigger types, and together took less than 10 minutes to configure. The system can already do things automatically. NocoBase supports many more node types (HTTP requests, calculations, loops, etc.), but for getting started, mastering these combos is enough to handle most scenarios.

Next Chapter Preview

The system can do things automatically now, but we're still missing a "big picture view" — how many tickets are there in total? Which category has the most? How many new tickets per day? In the next chapter, we'll use chart blocks to build a data dashboard to see everything at a glance.

Related Resources

Workflow Overview — Core workflow concepts and use cases
Collection Event Trigger — Data change trigger configuration
Update Record Node — Automatic data update setup

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