From Flow Template to Flow: build, configure, activate
Last updated 2026-10-20
How the three pieces fit together — Connection, Flow Template, Flow — and the steps to turn a template into a running flow: bind connections, dry-run, publish, and manage it afterwards.
The “Flow Templates” article in this section covers templates themselves — creating, editing, cloning, import/export. This article covers the step that article deliberately leaves out: how a template becomes a real, running Flow, and how the three core concepts relate. The terms are fixed — Connection, Flow Template, Flow — and there is no separate “workflow” object.
The three concepts#
| Concept | What it is | Can it run? |
|---|---|---|
| Connection | One configured link to one specific system: the platform, the credentials, the mapping. Created in the Connector Marketplace. | No — it is the plug, not the process |
| Flow Template | A reusable blueprint: a chain of steps (nodes) with placeholders where connections and accounts will go. Shared across stores / customers. | No — placeholders cannot run |
| Flow | A concrete flow built from a template (or from scratch) with a real Connection bound to every node. This is what you configure, publish and monitor. | Yes — once published |
Create a Flow from a template#
- Open Integration → Flows → New flow, and pick a template from the Template Library (or start blank if no template fits — you can save your result as a template later).
- The canvas opens with the template’s nodes as placeholders. Click each node that talks to an external system and bind the Connection it should use — e.g. the “pull orders” node gets your Shopify connection, the “buy label” node gets your UPS connection.
- A flow cannot be published while any node is still a placeholder — the designer shows unbound nodes clearly, so work through them until none are left.
- Set the node details the template left open: the mapping for this connection, filters (e.g. only orders with a given tag), and the trigger — on a schedule, on an event (new order, shipment created), or manual only.
- Dry-run the flow: it executes against real connections in test fashion and shows each node’s input and output without committing changes. Fix mapping or filter issues the dry run exposes.
- Publish. Publishing freezes this configuration as the live version; the flow starts running on its trigger from that moment.
Configure and manage a live Flow#
- Enable / disable: disabling pauses all runs immediately without deleting anything — use it when a channel is under maintenance or a credential is being rotated. Re-enable when ready; nothing is lost.
- Edit safely: opening a published flow’s designer edits a draft — live runs keep using the published version until you publish again. If a new version misbehaves, roll back to the previous version from the flow’s page.
- Per-step testing: the designer can test a single step against its bound connection — handy when one node fails and you want to check your fix without running the whole flow.
- Save as template: once a flow runs well, save it as a template — the copy strips the concrete connections back to placeholders, ready to reuse for the next store or customer.
- Simulation flows: a flow whose nodes use key-less (simulation) connections runs end-to-end on sample data, marked as simulated in Runs — the fastest way to validate a template before real credentials exist.