Okta Workflows how-to guides are questions and answers from weekly community office hours, MacAdmins Workflows Slack channel, and other places. Read all previous how-to guides. 

On to the question. 

How do you trigger a flow?

There are six ways to trigger a flow. They are:

• Schedule (flow runs periodically)
• Event (flow is called when a particular event is fired)
• Manual (clicking the Test button)
• API endpoint (another system invokes a flow via an API endpoint)
• Helper flow (flow calling another flow)
• Delegated flow (let someone else in your organization invoke it)

Schedule (flow runs periodically)

A flow can be scheduled to run periodically. For example, you can schedule a flow to run every hour, every day or once a week (there are other options also).

To schedule a flow, add the Schedule event:

To configure the schedule, click the 🕔 in the bottom of the card:

Options to configure when to run a flow:

Event (flow is called when a particular event is fired)

Another way to trigger a flow is when a particular event occurs in an organization. For example, this flow will run when a user is added to a group:

Every connector supports different events:

Manual (clicking the Test button)

If you have a flow that needs to run manually, infrequently or just once, use the Test button to trigger a flow. Even though it says Test, it’s a perfectly fine way to run a flow.

When manually running a flow you don’t need to have an event card set (1st card).

As API endpoint (another system invokes a flow via an API endpoint)

It is possible to trigger a flow from an external system via an API endpoint. For example, an event occurs in an external system which in turn makes a call to an API endpoint which triggers a flow.

To trigger a flow via an API endpoint, use the API Endpoint event card:

The API endpoint information is available by clicking the </> icon at the bottom of the card.

To test an API endpoint use a service such as Postman.

Helper flow (flow calling another flow)

A helper flow is a flow that is called from another flow. A helper flow is usually used when there is a list of objects (users, groups, etc.) and you need to iterate over each item in a list to perform an action.

In this example, a flow named Check last login will be called for each user found via List Users with Search card:

Helper flow is called for each item in a list:

A flow becomes a helper flow when using On Demand – Helper Flow event card:

Flow chart view of the main flow and helper flow:

Delegated Flow (let someone else in your organization invoke it)

Delegated Flow is when you delegate to another user to run a flow. That person might not be an administrator but needs to be able to trigger a particular flow.

To make a delegated flow, add Delegated Flow event card:

Note: as of this writing Delegated Flow is an Early Access feature.

A delegated flow event card can define one or more inputs. In the screenshot below the flow has to inputs: Name and ID.

Flow execution is delegated to another user within an organization. In the screenshot below, the user stella.green can run this flow:

When Stella invokes the flow, Stella will need to enter flow inputs:

Looking at flow history after Stella triggered the flow: