Workflow builder

Workflows are a collection of steps that automate a process or deliver messages to your users based on your configured logic. In PostHog, you can create a workflow using our no-code workflow builder.

Workflows are composed of the following components:

Draft and enabled workflows

Workflows have two states: draft and enabled.

When building a workflow, you can save your progress at any time as a draft, even if the configuration is incomplete or has errors. This lets you iteratively build complex workflows without needing a complete, valid configuration at every save.

Validation is only enforced when you enable a workflow. Before enabling, PostHog checks that all required fields are filled and configurations are valid. If there are errors, you'll see a message prompting you to fix them before the workflow can be enabled.

Draft workflows can also be archived, even if they contain invalid configurations.

Triggers

Every workflow starts with a trigger. Triggers represent actions taken by users that kick off the workflow. There are two types of triggers:

Event triggers

Event triggers are any PostHog event. These can be manually or automatically autocaptured by our SDKs. They can be filtered by the event properties and persons properties attached to the event.

To filter your events, click on the three lines icon next to the event name and select Add filter.

Dispatches

Dispatches are the messages you send, mail, slack, SMS, webhook, or any PostHog real time destinations. There are 4 main types of dispatches:

Delays

Delays help you control the timing of your messages. There are 3 types of delays:

You can see an example of a delay in the email drip campaign tutorial.

Audience splits

Audience splits help you target your automation or messages to specific groups of users. There are 2 types of audience splits:

These can be used to target users based on their behavior or properties.

PostHog Actions

PostHog Actions allow you to change a person's properties, trigger other events, or chain workflows together once a person reaches a specific point in your workflow. There are 2 types of PostHog actions:

Output variables

Output variables let you store data from a workflow step's result for use in later steps. This is useful when you need to chain workflow steps together, such as extracting an ID from a webhook response to use in a subsequent API call.

Configuring output variables

To configure output variables on a step:

1. Click on a workflow step (like a Webhook dispatch)
2. Expand the Output variables section
3. Click Add mapping to add a variable mapping
4. Select a workflow variable to store the result in
5. Specify a result path to extract specific data from the response

You can add multiple output variable mappings to a single step to extract different pieces of data. For example, you might extract both a ticket_id and ticket_number from a single API response.

Using the property picker

Instead of typing result paths manually, use the Pick from response button to select paths interactively:

1. Click Pick from response to execute a real HTTP request to the step's endpoint
2. The response is displayed as an interactive JSON tree
3. Click on any key in the tree to use it as the result path
4. If you have multiple variable mappings, select which variable to assign the path to

Result path syntax

Result paths let you extract specific data from a step's response. Use dot notation for nested objects and bracket notation for arrays:

Leave the result path blank to store the entire step result.