A flow is an automation that reacts to something happening in your store: an order is paid, a picker finishes a ticket, a vendor PO is sent. It has three parts. Once you know them you can build anything the builder offers.
Anatomy of a flow
- When (the trigger). The event that starts the flow, for example Order paid. A flow has exactly one trigger. Every trigger is listed in Triggers & actions.
- Only if (conditions, optional). Rules that decide whether the flow carries on, for example Platform type is Amazon. Match all or any of a group of rules. If the conditions do not match, the flow stops there: nothing runs and no run is recorded.
- Then (steps). What the flow does, top to bottom. A step is one of:
- Action: does something, such as push to ShipStation, send a notification or add a task card.
- Wait: pauses the flow for a delay such as 30m, 6h or 30d.
- If / else: checks a condition part way through and runs its Yes lane or its No lane.
A worked example
When an order is paid, if it came from Amazon, push it to ShipStation and tell the fulfillment team.
| Part | Setting |
|---|---|
| When | Order paid |
| Only if | Platform type is Amazon |
| Then | Action: Push order to ShipStation |
| Then | Action: Send a notification (Channel: In-app, Send to: Owners and admins) |
📸 Screenshot placeholder: The flow builder (Flows → New flow) with a trigger picked under When, one Only if condition and two steps under Then. The Status and Category dropdowns and the Create flow button at the bottom must be visible.
Build a flow
- Open Flows in the sidebar and click New flow. To start from a ready-made recipe, click From template instead.
- Name it and pick the trigger under When.
- Add conditions with + Only if… if you want to filter.
- Add steps under Then with Action, Wait or If / else. Each action shows a short description of what it does under its name. Use the ↑ and ↓ buttons to reorder steps and ✕ to remove one.
- Choose a status. Leave it on Shadow (recommended) while you test.
- Click Create flow.
ℹ️ Note: The action list shows the everyday actions. Click More options on a step to see the advanced ones as well (for example the ShipStation webhook steps and Compute a value).
Use data from the event and earlier steps
Most text settings (a title, a message, a card description) have a + Field button. It inserts a field from the event that started the flow, such as the order number, and the preview shows it as a labelled chip. When the flow runs, the field is replaced with the real value.
Some actions produce results that later steps can use. Type a short name in that step’s Save result as box (for example r). Later steps can then insert its results with + Field. For example, Move a short order to a location that has it saved as r gives {{ r.outcome }}, a plain sentence saying what happened, which you can post to a webhook or put on a task card.
⚠️ Warning: A field only has a value when the event or step actually provides one (a skipped step provides none). Check a few runs in Shadow to see what each field holds before you rely on it.
Location settings
Settings that ask for one of your locations show a dropdown of your active locations. In a step, the location you pick is saved with the flow: it cannot be filled from a field, and the step checks at run time that it is still one of yours.
Shadow, Active and Paused
| Status | What it does | Use it to |
|---|---|---|
| Shadow | Runs on real events and records what it would do. It does not push, move, send or change anything | Check your logic safely before going live |
| Active | Runs for real | Go live |
| Paused | Saved but not running | Switch a flow off without deleting it |
| Draft (off) | Saved but not running, offered when you create a flow | Park a flow you are still building |
On the Flows page, move a flow between states with Activate and Pause, or in the ⋯ menu with Shadow mode and Exit shadow (which pauses the flow). The same menu has Run now (on Manual and scheduled flows, see below), Edit, View YAML, Duplicate and Delete. Duplicate makes a copy named with “-copy” that starts in Shadow. Delete removes the flow and its run history, and cannot be undone.
💡 Tip: Always start a new flow in Shadow. Open View runs, confirm the runs match the orders you expect, then click Activate. In Shadow, a step that would have changed something records what it would have done. Steps that move an order say so in plain words, for example “Shadow mode, nothing was changed: …”.
ℹ️ Note: Pausing one of your own flows always works. Activating one can be refused if it uses a step your account cannot run. The message says which step.
Flows run by ILLUMA
Each flow on the Flows page carries a tag: dealer for your own flows, and platform for a flow ILLUMA maintains. You can see a platform flow, but you cannot edit, switch, delete or Run now it.
Run now
Run now, in the ⋯ menu, starts one of your own flows straight away. It is offered only for flows on the Manual / on demand or On a schedule trigger, and what it does depends on the flow’s status:
| Flow status | What Run now does |
|---|---|
| Active | Runs the flow for real. It asks you first, and says so when the flow sends notifications, emails or webhooks |
| Shadow | The menu reads Test run (shadow): a dry run that records what the flow would do and changes nothing |
| Paused, Draft (off) | Not offered. To test the flow, switch it to Shadow and use Test run |
- Conditions still apply. If the flow’s Only if conditions do not pass, nothing runs and the page tells you so.
- Scheduled flows get the same time, weekday and timezone a scheduled run would. While scheduled flows are not switched on yet, Run now on an Active scheduled flow is a one-off run, and the confirm says so.
- Flows that start from an event (Order paid, Pick ticket picked and so on) cannot be run this way: there is no order or ticket to give them. Test them in Shadow on real events instead.
- Who ran it. The run records the person who clicked, as recorded by the dashboard. The message after the click links to the run, so you can see how it went.
- Paused accounts. If flows are paused for your account, nothing runs.
Platform flows cannot be run this way.
Scheduled flows
The On a schedule trigger runs a flow at set times in your business timezone: every day at a time, or every 15 minutes to 12 hours, optionally only on some weekdays.
⚠️ Warning: Scheduled flows are not switched on yet. You can build and save one, and it starts in Shadow, but its schedule will not run it until ILLUMA switches scheduled flows on. Until then, only a Run now or Test run shows under View runs.
Run history
Every time a flow fires it records a run: the event that started it, the result of each step and any error. A run is only recorded when the flow’s Only if conditions pass. An event your conditions filter out leaves no run at all, so a missing run usually means the conditions did not match. Open Flows → View runs, filter by status, and click a run for the step by step detail. When something misbehaves, the run is where you find out why.
One event, one run. Each event starts at most one run of each flow, even if the event is delivered more than once.
Retries. If a step fails, ILLUMA tries it again: up to 3 attempts in all, waiting about 1 second and then 4 seconds between them. If the last attempt fails, the run is marked Failed and the steps after it do not run. Steps that send or create things are written so a retry does not do it twice: an email or webhook goes once per run and step, and a PO is never sent twice.
Runs are written to be safe to look at:
- Email addresses, phone numbers and customer addresses in step data are shown as [redacted].
- A webhook URL is never shown in full. A run shows its host and a short fingerprint (for example
https://example.logic.azure.com/… #3f9a1c0b2d4e), so you can tell two URLs apart without seeing the secret part.
⚠️ Warning: Flows do not hide failures. If a step fails (for example ShipStation cannot be reached), the run is marked Failed and your account’s owners and admins get a “Flow Failed” notification in the app. Check your runs regularly, and add a notification step to tell your team about the cases you care about.
Next: Triggers & actions, the full list of what a flow can react to and do. For the notification step see Notifications, email & webhooks, for pick tickets Pick ticket flows, and for cases and task cards Cases and task cards.