Describe any automation as a trigger followed by actions, filters and branches.
Write down the event that started the last repetitive task you did at work, such as an email arriving, a form being filled in or a file landing in a shared folder. In an automation tool, that event is the trigger, one of the four parts you will find in every flow.
Automation tools can look overwhelming the first time you open them. There are hundreds of apps, dozens of step types and menus inside menus. You do not need to learn all of those options. Every automation, in any tool, is built from the same four parts: a trigger, actions, filters and branches. Once you can name these four, you can read a flow someone else built and sketch your own on a napkin.
The trigger is the event that starts one run of the automation. Nothing happens until it fires. Common triggers are a new form response, a new email arriving in a particular folder, a new row in a spreadsheet, a new file in a shared folder, or a time on the clock, such as every weekday at 8am (an invented example).
Each run handles one item. If three parents submit an enquiry form in an hour, the flow runs three times, once per response. So a problem such as a duplicate or an error usually affects one run and leaves the rest of the flow alone.
A tool notices a trigger event in one of two ways, and the way it uses affects how fast your flow responds. With checking, also called polling, the tool asks the other app at regular intervals, often every few minutes, whether anything new has arrived, and starts a run if it finds something. This leaves a delay between the event and the run. The length of the delay depends on the tool and the plan, so check the current details on the tool's own pages.
An instant trigger uses a webhook. The other app sends a message to the automation tool the moment something happens, so the run starts within seconds. Not every app offers instant triggers. In most tools, when you pick a trigger, the screen shows whether it is instant or checks on a schedule.
An action is something the tool does in another app on your behalf, such as adding a row to a spreadsheet, sending an email, creating a task, posting a message to a chat group, uploading a file or updating a record. A flow can have one action or twenty, and they run in order, one after another. Write each action as an app and a verb. This is the same habit you used for your step list in module 1, and it makes flows easier to read.
Mei Ling works at a tuition centre in Tampines (an invented example). In module 1 she chose the enquiry task to automate. In lesson 1.2, Fix the process before you automate it, she cut steps until three actions were left. Her trigger is a new response on the centre's enquiry form. Her actions run in this order: add the enquiry as a row in the enquiry sheet, send the parent a confirmation email with the timetable for their child's level, and create a reminder for the teacher to call back in two days.
A filter is a check partway through a flow. If the condition is true, the run continues. If it is false, the run stops quietly at that point and no later steps happen.
Mei Ling's form sometimes gets test entries from staff, and spam turns up now and then. She adds a filter after the trigger: continue only if the email address does not contain the centre's own domain and the message field is not empty. Test entries and blank submissions stop at the filter, and no confirmation email is sent for them.
A branch does not stop the run. It sends records down different paths depending on a condition, and each path continues with its own actions. Some tools call branches paths and others call them routers, and they work the same way. Mei Ling could branch on the child's level, so that primary enquiries get one timetable in the email and secondary enquiries get another.
To choose between them, ask what should happen to the records. If some records should be ignored, use a filter. If every record needs handling but in different ways, use a branch.
When you can read a flow out loud as one sentence covering the trigger, filter, actions and branch, you have the whole design. Mei Ling's reads: when a new enquiry form response arrives, stop if it is a staff test or empty; otherwise add a row to the enquiry sheet, branch by level and send either the primary or the secondary confirmation email, then create a call-back reminder for the teacher.
If you can say your flow in that shape, you understand it well enough to build it. If you cannot, the gap is usually in the trigger. People often know what they want done but are vague about what starts it.
Use the same order whether you are designing a flow or reading one you have been given:
Identify the trigger, the event that starts each run. Add any filters that should stop a run, such as tests, spam or blank entries. List the actions in the order they happen, each written as an app plus a verb. Add a branch where every record needs handling but different records need different handling. Say the whole flow out loud as one sentence, and if you cannot, check the trigger first.
Take the candidate you chose at the end of lesson 1.4, Score your own task list. In the activity below, write it as one trigger, the filters that should stop a run, and the actions in the order they happen. Keep each action to an app and a verb, the way Mei Ling did.
Pick one automation idea from your shortlist. Write it down as one trigger, its filters and a numbered list of actions.
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