You will be able to describe any automation as a trigger followed by actions, filters and branches.
Open any automation tool for the first time and it can look like a wall of options: hundreds of apps, dozens of step types, menus inside menus. It is easy to assume you need to learn all of it. You do not. Every automation you will ever build, in any of these tools, is made from the same four parts, and once you can name them you can read anyone's flow and sketch your own on a napkin.
Those parts are a trigger, actions, filters and branches. This lesson takes each one in turn using the enquiry task Mei Ling chose for the tuition centre in Tampines in module 1.
A 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 simply a time on the clock, such as every weekday at 8am.
Each run deals with one item. When three parents submit the enquiry form in an hour, the flow runs three times, once for each response. That idea matters later when you think about duplicates and errors, because a problem usually affects one run, not the whole flow.
There are two ways a tool can notice that a trigger event has happened, and the difference affects how fast your flow responds.
The first is checking. The automation tool asks the other app, every few minutes, whether anything new has arrived. If something has, it starts a run. This is called polling, and it means a delay between the event and the run. How long a delay depends on the tool and your plan, so check the current details on the tool's own pages.
The second is an instant trigger, which uses a webhook. Here the other app sends a message to the automation tool the moment something happens, so the run starts within seconds. Not every app offers this. When you pick a trigger in most tools, it will tell you whether that trigger is instant or checks on a schedule.
For Mei Ling, the trigger is a new response on the centre's enquiry form.
An action is something the tool does in another app on your behalf. It adds a row to a spreadsheet, sends an email, creates a task, posts a message to a chat group, uploads a file, or updates a record. A flow can have one action or twenty, and they run in order, one after another.
Mei Ling's flow, after the cuts she made in lesson 1.2, Fix the process before you automate it, has three actions. Add the enquiry as a row in the enquiry sheet. Send the parent a confirmation email with the timetable for their child's level. Create a reminder for the teacher to call back in two days.
Notice that each action names an app and a verb. That habit, carried over from the step list you wrote in module 1, makes flows much easier to read.
A filter is a check partway through the flow. If the condition is true, the run carries on. If it is false, the run stops quietly at that point and nothing after the filter happens.
Mei Ling's form gets the occasional test entry from staff and the odd piece of spam. A filter after the trigger can say: only continue 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 there, and no confirmation goes out to anyone.
A branch is different. Instead of stopping a run, it sends records down different paths depending on a condition. The tools call branches by different names, such as paths or routers, but they work the same way. Mei Ling could branch on the child's level: primary enquiries get one timetable in the email, secondary enquiries get another, and each path then carries on with its own actions.
The test for which you need is simple. If some records should be ignored, use a filter. If every record needs handling but in different ways, use a branch.
Put the pieces together and Mei Ling's flow reads like this. When a new enquiry form response arrives, stop if it is a staff test or empty. Otherwise add a row to the enquiry sheet, then branch by level: send the primary or secondary confirmation email. Finally, create a call-back reminder for the teacher.
That sentence is the whole design. If you can say your own flow out loud in that shape, you understand it well enough to build it. If you cannot, the gap usually sits in the trigger, since people often know what they want done but are vague about what starts it.
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.
Take one automation idea from your shortlist and write it as one trigger, its filters, and a numbered list of actions.
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