The Dock & App drawer

Use the Dock and App drawer to add Steps to the canvas and configure their inputs. The Dock along the bottom holds every Step you can add. The App drawer on the right configures the Step you have selected.

At a glanceVerified in app · Oct 30, 2026

Use it to: Add apps, built-in tools, AI Steps, and subflows to the canvas, then configure each Step's Setup, Executions, and Test & Debug tabs
Find it: Bottom of the canvas (Dock) · Right side of the canvas when a Step is selected (App drawer)
Limits: 5 Dock groups (Apps, Tools, AI, Subflows, Search) · 3 App drawer tabs (Setup, Executions, Test & Debug) · Canvas annotations (N, I, Y)
Instead: Right-click Canvas Context Menu (to add Steps or sticky notes directly at your cursor)

The dock

Run sits on the left as its own control; the five groups to its right are where steps come from.

The Dock holds everything you can add to an automation, in five groups:

Group	What is in it
Apps	The third-party integration library: both triggers and actions live here.
Tools	Every built-in step, grouped by what it is for (see below).
AI	Language-model steps such as AI Prompt and AI Agent.
Subflows	Your other automations, ready to call as a step. See Subflow.
Search	Find any app, trigger, or tool by name.

How Tools is organised

The Tools tab groups built-in steps by the job they do, with a search box at the bottom so you never have to memorise the grouping:

Group	What it holds
Start	Built-in triggers: Scheduler, Click to start, Webhook, Chat Trigger, Form Trigger, and Error Trigger.
Flow	Routing, loops, and approvals: Conditions, Switch, Filter, Repeater, Wait, Human Review, Stop and Error, and Do Nothing.
Data → Change	Reshaping a record: Summarize, Change fields, Date, Custom Variables, and AI Data Transform.
Data → Lists	Working on a list as a whole: Sort, Remove duplicates, Limit, and Combine.
Data → Convert	Turning one format into another: Parse JSON, Extract from File, Convert to File, HTML to text, Split Text, plus Glow Utils.
Data → Dev tools	Developer building blocks: HTTP Request, Respond to Webhook, and Code editor.

A trigger from a third-party app, such as starting when a Google Doc is created, lives under Apps, together with that app’s actions. The Start group in Tools holds the built-in triggers only.

Run sits beside these groups: click the button to start a run, or open its dropdown to change the run point. See Testing & Debugging. You can also open the same catalogue at your cursor with the right-click context menu.

The App drawer

Click a step on the canvas and the App drawer opens on the right:

Tab	What it does
Setup	Configure the step’s connected account, action, and mapped input fields.
Executions	Inspect what this step produced on previous runs. See Step-Level Executions.
Test & Debug	Edit saved testing data, run isolated tests, and configure retry and error paths. (Chat Trigger replaces this tab with Chat; flow-control steps without independent test settings show it as unavailable.)

Inside the Setup header, a few controls help you manage the step:

Setup required badge: Appears on incomplete steps; hover or focus the badge to see which required fields are missing.
Step actions (⋮) menu: Run the step (Run step), reset configured properties (Clear all props), or switch an eligible app action’s Mode between HTTP (manual field-by-field configuration, the default) and MCP (natural-language instructions).
Recovery states: If a dropdown fails to load due to a temporary provider issue, click Try again beside the error. If a teammate, the Assistant, or an undo removes the open step, the drawer displays This step was removed.

After a run, inspect the Step’s result in Executions. To trace its input, read its configured references and transformations, then inspect the referenced Steps in the same run. The input need not come from the Step immediately above.

Annotations

The canvas is not only for steps. Three things can be dropped anywhere on it, none of which affect execution. They come from the Sticky Note & Media menu in the controls at the top right, or from the shortcut key:

Annotation	Shortcut	Use
Sticky note	`N`	Comments, open questions, or an explanation of awkward logic. Supports Markdown.
Image	`I`	Screenshots, architecture diagrams, reference designs.
YouTube video	`Y`	A walkthrough or recording, so context stays with the automation.

These are what make an automation readable to whoever opens it next, including you, months later. Collaborators with access to the canvas see shared annotations, as covered in Real-Time Editing.

Verify it works

Run: Add a Step from the Dock and click it on the canvas
You should see: The App drawer opens on the right with Setup, Executions, and Test & Debug tabs for that Step.

What’s Next?

Learn what a step is made of in Steps and Connections.
Reach the same menus faster with the Context Menu.