2. The Basics: Build It Yourself
About ten minutes. This time you pass data from one step into another. Use Slack to send the result to a real app, or follow the no-account path with AI Prompt.
What you will learn
- Placing steps on the canvas and connecting them
- Connecting an app so a workflow can act on your behalf, if you use Slack
- Mapping data from one step into another
Before you start: this tutorial connects Slack. In many companies installing a Slack app needs an administrator’s approval, so it is worth checking first. If you cannot connect Slack, follow the AI Prompt path in Steps 2–4. It needs no connected account and teaches the same mapping skill.
Step 1: Add a trigger
Start a fresh workflow for this: in the sidebar open Automations and click Create new, as in Tutorial 1. Every workflow starts with a trigger: the event that wakes it up.
Replace the trigger placeholder
On the empty canvas, click + Add Trigger on the left-hand placeholder. The dock’s catalogue opens.
Add a Webhook
Under Tools → Start, click Webhook. It takes the placeholder’s spot on the canvas.
Give it test data
Click the step and open the Test & Debug tab. Testing data shows a sample object as a small structured editor. Hover over its top line and click the pencil icon: the object turns into editable text. Replace it with:
{
"visitor_name": "Alice",
"message": "I would like a demo!"
}Press Cmd+Enter (Ctrl+Enter on Windows) to apply. The editor folds back into the structured view with your two fields.
Run it
Click Run step, then open the Executions tab. You will see the two fields you just entered. Glow now knows the shape of the data this trigger produces. That is what makes the next step possible.
A trigger with no data is hard to build against. You would be mapping fields you cannot see. Giving it test data first is the normal way to work, not a shortcut for tutorials.
Step 2: Add an action
A trigger on its own does nothing. Choose the path that fits what you can connect.
Slack
Add a Slack step
Open Apps in the dock at the bottom, search for Slack, and pick Send Message. It lands on the canvas; place it to the right of your Webhook.
Connect the steps
Drag from the dot on the right edge of the Webhook step to the dot on the left edge of the Slack step. That line is the execution order: Webhook first, Slack second.
Connect your account
Click the Slack step and choose Connect new account… in its Account field. After authorising, pick the channel the message should go to.
Step 3: Map the data
This is the part worth slowing down for. You will make the action use what arrived at the trigger rather than fixed text.
Click the data icon beside the field you are editing to open the Workflow data panel, then pick visitor_name under the Webhook step. Glow inserts the reference with the Webhook’s step number in front.
The snippets below write that number as 1. Read the real number off your Webhook step and use it instead, exactly as Tutorial 1 taught.
Slack
In the Slack step, put this in the Message field:
New inbound request from {{ 1.visitor_name }}:
{{ 1.message }}Why a number and not a name? Because renaming a step never breaks
anything. {{ 1.message }} keeps working however you label step 1. Full
syntax in Variable Reference Syntax.
Step 4: Run it, then set it Live
Run the whole workflow
Click Run in the dock. Glow executes both steps using the test data from Step 1.
- Slack path: confirm the message arrived in your chosen channel.
- AI Prompt path: open the AI Prompt step, select Executions, expand the latest run, and read its
result.
Set it Live
Click the status control on the workflow (it currently reads Draft) and choose Live.
In Draft the workflow only runs when you run it: triggers disabled, manual runs only. Once it is Live, anything that sends a request to the Webhook’s URL starts it automatically. See Webhook Triggers for how to point a real system at it.
What’s Next?
You can now build a workflow by hand and move data through it. If you used Slack, you also connected an app that acts on your behalf. Next: branching, so a workflow can take different paths depending on what arrives.