Conditional Branching

How to create decision paths in your workflows

Depending on data received in previous steps of your workflow, you may want to decide how to proceed further. Two actions help you split your workflow based on conditions:

• Condition splits the workflow into exactly two branches.
• Split splits the workflow into multiple branches.

You can add either of these just like you add any other action, using the + button in the workflow editor:

Condition

The Condition action splits the workflow into exactly two branches. One is executed if one or multiple conditions that you specify are satisfied, and the other is executed otherwise.

Think of this as the equivalent of an if statement in programming.

If you choose the Condition action, the properties pane on the right lets you define the condition. By default, there’s only one condition, but you can combine multiple conditions with logical conjunction (click And) or disjunction (click Or).

Every condition contains one or two data fields. Clicking a data field opens the Data Selector view, allowing you to select output from any of your prior actions:

Alongside the data fields, there’s a combo box that defines the specific operation for your condition. See Operators for details.

Here’s an example of a complete condition that uses disjunction to check values returned from two separate prior steps:

If you click the Test tab in the condition step’s properties pane, you can evaluate the condition and verify that the result matches your expectations.

Split

The Split action splits the workflow into multiple branches. Each branch executes if its specific condition is met. An extra branch, called the default branch, executes if none of the conditions specified for other branches is satisfied. Every condition should be unique: if conditions in multiple branches are satisfied, this results in a workflow failure.

Think of this action as the equivalent of a switch statement in programming.

Each condition in the Split properties pane has one or more data fields and a combo box to define the operator.

Unlike the Condition action, Split only allows one condition per branch, meaning you can’t define complex conditions using And or Or operators.

Operators

When you define conditions using the Condition or Split actions, you need to specify what operation to apply to the value(s) you supply. The combo box alongside the data fields lets you do just that:

OpenOps provides 20+ operators applicable to several types of data: text (strings), numbers, boolean values, lists, and dates.

Here’s the complete list of operators along with their additional settings:

Data type	Operator
Text	Contains
Text	Does not contain
Text	Is
Text	Is not
Text	Starts with
Text	Does not start with
Text	Ends with
Text	Does not end with
Number	Is greater than
Number	Is less than
Number	Is equal to
Boolean	Is true
Boolean	Is false
All data types	Exists
All data types	Does not exist
List	Is empty
List	Is not empty
List	Length is greater than
List	Length is less than
List	Length is equal to
List	Contains
List	Does not contain
Date	Is before
Date	Is after

All text operators provide a setting to toggle case sensitivity. All other operators come without additional settings.

Exploring conditional branches in large workflows

If you’re working with a large workflow that has many conditional branches and are having trouble navigating between them, consider collapsing steps you don’t need to focus on right now, or use the Tree view pane.

To collapse a condition, split, or loop step, click the collapse icon to the left of the node. A collapsed node can be expanded by clicking the icon again:

Alternatively, for a bird’s-eye view of the workflow, open the three-dot menu in the top control pane of the workflow editor, then click Tree view:

This displays the Tree view pane on the left side of the editor — a great way to see a compact representation of your workflow, including conditions and branches: