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Getting Started With Workflows
Getting Started With Workflows

A guide to Copy.ai workflows

Updated over 2 months ago

What are workflows?

Workflows in Copy.ai allow you to accelerate, automate and scale content generation and analysis tasks by chaining together a series of AI and procedural actions. Instead of manually performing multi-step processes in a multi-turn chat conversation with an LLM, you can encapsulate the conversation steps into a workflow that can be run repeatedly an infinite number of times.

In essence, a workflow is a series of AI and procedural steps that encapsulate a process and can be run repeatedly, at scale.

Here's an example of a Copy.ai workflow:

Some key things to understand about workflows:

  • Workflows are built as a series of steps, with each step being an AI action (like Generate Text, Extract Data From Text, Categorize Text, etc.) or a procedural action (like Internet Search or Scrape web page). There are also workflow actions that encompass both AI and procedural steps in the same action (like Research Agent, Website Research Agent, Research Statistics Agent, and Prospector Agent).
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  • Workflows allow you to reference data between actions, meaning that you can build context throughout the workflow instead of relying on a model to remember everything you are telling it. This helps ground the AI with the right data to provide you accurate output. This also means you can break up very large, very complex tasks into smaller objectives that result in higher quality output.

The power of workflows is that they allow you to automate content generation systematically rather than performing one-off tasks in chat.

By spending time up front building and optimizing a workflow, you can then use it to scale out that process to hundreds or thousands of executions.

Building, Editing and Testing Workflows

Using the workflow library vs Building your own workflow

When it comes to building workflows, check our Workflows Library first to see if there is already an existing template that fits your needs. If a Workflow Library workflow fits your needs, just click Try this on the specific workflow and it will be installed into your Teamspace.

Building your own workflow

A view of both the manual builder and chat builder

If you decide you need to build your own workflow or have an idea of a custom process you want to encapsulate, workflows can be built in a few different ways.

Manual Builder

  1. First, Click on the Add a Trigger button and select the appropriate trigger. Some commonly used triggers to be familiar with are:

    • Manual input: Use this when you want to define your inputs manually and then trigger the workflow. This is useful if a lot of users will run this workflow independently, if your workflow will be run via a Form, or if you have a spreadsheet to load in.

    • Trigger on a Schedule: Use this if you need the workflow to trigger repeatedly on a certain schedule (e.g. Every week on Monday at 9:00 AM )

    • Integration triggers: Use this when you want a workflow to run based off of an action taking in an external system, connected via direct integration (e.g. Salesforce or HubSpot).

    • Table Rows Change: Use this when you want a workflow to run when a table row is created or updated on a specific table.

Building the rest of your workflow

  1. After adding the right trigger, add the actions you need by clicking the Add an action button. After your first action is added, this will show as a purple + icon. You can also use the duplicate icon to duplicate an action or the trash can icon to delete an action.

    Add an action by click the Add an action button and selecting the right action


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    Once you’ve added an action, you’ll see a purple + icon to add more actions as needed for your workflow.

  2. Add as many actions as your workflow needs. If you need more information on specific actions and how they work, check our our Action Guides section here.

Workflow Chat Builder:

With the Chat builder, you can provide a description of your process in natural language to the Chat builder, and the builder will interpret your prompt and select the right actions for you, providing sample configuration as well.

We recommend starting with the following pattern for a Chat builder prompt:

Given X, please do Y and Z

Ask yourself the following questions when thinking about the right builder prompt:

  • What are the inputs necessary for the workflow?

  • What are the ultimate outputs that I need?

  • What are some of the steps I need the workflow to follow?

  • What actions are we expecting it to use?

Let’s say we want to scrape a blog post, summarize the blog post, identify key highlights, then use that summary and highlights to write a LinkedIn post promoting the blog post.

We can use the following builder prompt:

Given a blog post url, scrape the blog post URL, then summarize the blog post and extract key highlights and then use the blog post content, summary and key highlights to write a linkedin post promoting the blog post

Type your builder prompt into the Chat builder and submit when ready. The builder will take a few moments, but will generate a workflow from that prompt, ready to be edited.

Here's an example:

Sample builder prompt using the “Given X please do Y and Z” pattern

Sample outcome of a builder prompt

Once your workflow is generated from the Chat builder, be sure to audit every action to ensure the proper configuration. If you need more actions, just add them anywhere needed using the purple + icon.

If you need more information on specific actions and how they work, check our our Action Guides section here.

Once you’ve added your actions, you’re ready to test your workflow.

Testing your workflow

Test your workflow using the purple Test Workflow button above the Input section.

When you do, the testing interface section will pop up on the right side of your browser window. Here, you can provide all of the sample inputs needed to run a test run of the workflow.

Click the purple Test Workflow button in order to test your workflow.

Note: Testing workflows does not cost credits

  1. Fill in the required workflow inputs and hit the Run Workflow Test button. If the button is still grey, that means you’ve not provided all of the proper inputs. If the button is purple, the test will run.

    Example workflow test

  2. Once the test finishes running, you can see several important attributes:

    1. An estimated credit amount to forecast how many credits your workflow will run at scale

    2. A view of each action’s output given your example input provided.

  3. For each action in the test, you’ll be able to select from the following options, if you need to:

    1. Edit: Takes you to the configuration of this specific action.

    2. Retest Step: Allows you to retest only this single step.

    3. Copy: Allows you to copy the action output

    4. View full: View the full output in a more readable manner (a modal will expand to show the full output). This is helpful for longer form content

Repeat this process as many times as needed to get your workflow to your minimum viable quality. Once you’ve reached minimum viable quality, your workflow can run any number of times!

Running a Workflow

There are several different ways to run a Workflow:

Running a Workflow in the UI In Bulk

The simplest way to run a workflow is directly in the Copy.ai user interface. Navigate to your workflow in the Workflows page

  1. Click into the workflow to open it. You should see the workflow name in the top left corner of the screen

  2. Go to the Table tab

  3. Prepare a CSV file (spreadsheet) with a column for each workflow input. Each row in the CSV will be one set of inputs to run through the workflow. You can import the CSV file by using the Import CSV button and following the instructions.

    1. Alternatively, you can use the New Row button to manually add rows in the event you don’t have CSV prepared.

  4. Once your data is loaded in, select the Run All button to run all available rows. A confirmation modal will confirm the number of workflow runs you are about to trigger.

  5. Alternatively, you can use the Run button next to each individual workflow run if you wish to run a single row manually.

  6. You can see the status of each run in the Status column. A workflow can either be:

    1. New: The workflow run has yet to be run

    2. Waiting: The workflow is waiting to be added to the processing queue.

    3. Processing: The workflow is currently running

    4. Complete: The workflow has finished running (all results should be visible)

    5. Failed: The workflow failed due to an error. Hover over the failed status indicator to review the error message, or open the run view for additional context.

Using a CSV allows you to prepare your workflow inputs in a spreadsheet and easily import them to generate outputs in bulk.

Running a Workflow in the UI Once

The simplest way to run a workflow is directly in the Copy.ai user interface on the Run tab, sometimes called the Run Once tab.

  1. Navigate to your workflow in the Workflows section. Click into the workflow to open it and then select the Run tab

  2. Fill in the required inputs to run the workflow.

  3. Click Run Workflow to execute the workflow on all the input rows

Running a Workflow via Forms

For users that do not need back-end access to Copy.ai, you can configure a form so they can trigger the run of the workflow. This can serve as a demo request form on your website, or live on an internal page for end users who don’t need platform access.

Configuration options for the Workflow Form:

Sample of a Workflow’s full page form view:

Sample of a Workflow’s full page form view

  1. Navigate to your workflow in the Workflows section. Click into the workflow to open it and then select the Forms tab

  2. Make sure the toggle is set to On.

  3. Copy either the Embed code to embed the form in an iframe on a webpage or use the Full page link

  4. Customize the form with the following options: Form Title, Form Description, Button Text and Button Color

  5. Customize the Form Submission Behavior:

    1. Show confirmation page: This option means only the designed Confirmation message template will show when any user submits the workflow.

    2. Show workflow output: This option means the selected workflow outputs will show when any user submits the workflow. You are able to deselect and select outputs to show or hide outputs as needed.

  6. If necessary, update your Confirmation message.

  7. Apply any necessary Additional options that allow users to re-run the workflow, reset the form, copy results as needed. You can also select to show or hide the Powered by Copy.ai section on the form as well.

  8. Customize the Rate limit setting to your desired rate limit (this is recommended to be set to on).

  9. Configure an error message that will show in the event the workflow fails.

Running a Workflow via API

For a more programmatic approach, you can run a workflow via API. This allows you to integrate workflows into your own applications and processes.

  1. Get the API key for your workspace from the API tab and note down your workflow’s API endpoint

  2. Make a POST request to your workflow's API endpoint (see more information on the appropriate request body format here).

  3. The API response will provide the result of queueing the workflow and if successful the workflow run ID, or the unique identifier of that workflow’s run. The response can be obtained via polling for results, or by setting up a webhook that is subscribed to workflowRun.completed events.

Using the API enables developers to incorporate workflow generation into other systems and automate the process on a schedule or based on other triggers. See our Workflows API documentation for more information.

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