Workflow Automation Using Cloud Elements' Formulas and Trigger Events

Our Customer Enablement Manager, Clayton Shaver, recently demoed how to write Formulas in the newly released Cloud Elements 2.0. Here are few tips and instructions to help you use both our original Formula Builder as well as the new Formula-as-a-Resource feature!

What Are Formula Templates?

Let's start with a little bit of context around what Formulas are and how we use them. Just like we have Elements and instances of Elements in our platform, we also have Formula Templates and instances of Formulas. It's an important distinction to make when you're looking at the Cloud Elements platform versus other workflow orchestration tools out there - when you start writing a Formula in Cloud Elements you're really starting at the template level. So the idea here is that you are creating a generic template that you can instantiate multiple times, to a variety of use cases for workflow automation.

For example, instead of building a workflow to push data from a specific Salesforce account to a specific HubSpot account, you can build a reusable Formula and use it as a connector between any two CRM or Marketing Automations systems or any two unique accounts in HubSpot or Salesforce, which makes this a more scalable solution when applying a workflow to all of your customer accounts or enterprise products.

Creating a Formula

When you log into Cloud Elements, you'll find your existing Formula Templates by clicking the 'Formulas' button on the left side of the platform. To create new Formulas, use the 'Create New Formula Template' button.

What Are Triggers and Trigger Types?

Triggers are exactly what they sound like. It's the means by which we trigger a workflow. Cloud Elements offers four different trigger types. The Event trigger is a commonly used trigger type. An event trigger is for an event generated by an Element instance. So this can be events generated either by a webhook or polling.

The next trigger type is the Element Request trigger. This works a lot like a listener so rather than being generated by an event, this is kicked off when an API call is made to an Element instance.

The third type is Scheduled trigger, which works off of a cron format. You can use this to run a Formula on any kind of scheduled timing event. For example, you might have a Formula that runs every night at midnight or every hour, so this trigger type is a good way to move data in bulk.

Then the last option is the Manual trigger. This type is kicked off by an API call to the Formula instance. You make an API call directly into the Formula instance to trigger the workflow.

Next Steps

To learn how to use these triggers in Cloud Elements platform check out our on-demand webinar: How to Write Formulas or our Cloud Elements API documentation.