Course 5: Workflow Engine
Workflows are the brains of your connected solution. Using Losant’s drag-and-drop editor, you can build every interaction your application needs right from within the Workflow Engine.
Chapter 1: Workflow Overview
The Workflow Engine is one of the platform’s most powerful components. It gives you the ability to do stream processing, real-time notifications, integrations to third-party services, and bi-directional device communication — and this is just the tip of the iceberg. This chapter is your overview of workflows.
Chapter 2: Building a Workflow
The best way to understand workflows is to build one. In this chapter, we are going to actually build a workflow and talk about what’s going on step-by-step. This will help you build faster and really understand what’s going on behind the scenes.
Chapter 3: Workflow Mechanics
The Workflow Engine is very complex. This chapter is dedicated to diving deeper into the mechanics behind the engine. We will cover things like workflow execution, branching, limits, and more.
Chapter 4: Triggers
Each trigger allows you to start a workflow based on things like device state reports, messages published to a custom MQTT topic, or even a simple timer. In this chapter, we are going to go through and examine some of the most used Triggers. This will give you a good understanding of how and when to use these nodes.
Chapter 5: Logic Nodes
Logic nodes help you make decisions, encode or decode data, or make simple calculations. In this chapter, we will examine some of the most used Logic Nodes: the Conditional Node, the Latch Node, the Mutate Node, and the Function Node.
Chapter 6: Data Nodes
The Data Nodes allow you to push and pull data in and out of the Workflow Engine. In this chapter, we are going to go through and examine some of the most used data nodes: the Gauge Query Node, the Time Series Node, and the HTTP Node.
Chapter 7: Output Nodes
Output Nodes help you send data out of the Workflow Engine. You can send a command to a listening device, an email to a technician, a text message to yourself, a request to a third-party API, and a whole bunch more. Let’s talk about popular Output Nodes.
Chapter 8: Storage and Globals
In this chapter, we are going to talk about some specific workflow features: Workflow Storage and Workflow Globals. Workflow Storage helps you persist values across workflow executions. Workflow Globals allow you to define constant variables that can be referenced in workflow runs. Let’s dive in and see how these work.
Chapter 9: Workflow Versioning
In this chapter, we are going to talk about Workflow Versioning, and import and exporting workflows. With Workflow Versioning, you can test and develop different versions of a workflow without breaking the one you have in production. Let’s dive in.
Chapter 10: Loop Node
In this chapter, we are going to talk about one Data Node in particular, the Loop Node. The Loop Node deserves its own video because it works differently than any other data node. Using an example, we will walkthrough the Loop Node and talk about how it works.
Chapter 11: Outro
We covered many things about the Workflow Engine. I hope you learned a lot and are beginning to see how you can use it to process data within your application. It is time now to begin the workshop!
Workshop
The next workshop is on the Workflow Engine! The purpose of this workshop is to give you real, step-by-step instructions on how to accomplish and use most of the tools we covered throughout the course.
This workshop builds on the Course Four Workshop and will guide you through creating workflows and illustrate how to use advanced workflow features.
Related Material
- Application Workflows Documentation
- Experience Workflows Documentation
- Edge Workflows Documentation
- Timer Trigger Documentation
- Virtual Button Trigger Documentation
- Device: State Trigger Documentation
- Webhook Trigger Documentation
- Conditional Node Documentation
- Latch Node Documentation
- Mutate Node Documentation
- Function Node Documentation
- Data: Gauge Query Node Documentation
- Data: Time-Series Node Documentation
- HTTP Node Documentation
- Debug Node Documentation
- Device: State Node Documentation
- Device: Command Node Documentation
- Storage: Get Value Node Documentation
- Storage: Set Value Node Documentation
- Workflow Versioning Documentation
- Loop Node Documentation
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