Building in the Editor

The workflow editor is the visual canvas where you design your workflow. This page explains how to use it.

Opening the editor

Go to Workflows in the left sidebar.
Click an existing workflow to open it, or click New Workflow to start from scratch.

When creating a new workflow, you’ll first enter a name and choose a record type — or start from a template (see below). Once you confirm, the editor opens with the canvas ready to go.

Starting from a template

Instead of building a workflow from a blank canvas, you can start from a pre-built template. Templates are pre-configured workflows for common scenarios — the trigger and steps are already filled in, and you can tweak them to fit your school.

When you click New Workflow, you’ll see a template picker before the blank-canvas option:

Browse templates by category (Members, Communication, Finance, Automation), or search by name.
Click a template to select it. Its name and record type are filled in automatically.
Click Create to open the editor with the template’s trigger and steps already in place, ready to review and adjust.

Templates currently available include:

Template	Category	What it does
Welcome New Member	Members	Adds a welcome note whenever a new member is created
Birthday Reminder Note	Members	Adds a birthday note to each member on their birthday every year
Promote to Next Level	Members	Manual workflow — select a membership and promote it to the next belt or level
New Member — Lead vs. Full Member	Members	When a member is created, adds a follow-up note for leads or a welcome note for full members
Weekly New Lead Follow-Up	Communication	Every Monday, adds a follow-up note to every new lead that hasn’t been contacted yet
Open Overdue Invoice	Finance	One day after an invoice is due, automatically opens it for collection
Cancel No-Show Bookings	Automation	Manual workflow — select bookings and cancel them in bulk for no-shows
Mark Class Attendance	Automation	Manual workflow — mark selected bookings as attended in bulk

A template is just a starting point — nothing is saved or published until you review it and click Publish yourself, so it’s safe to pick one and adjust it to match how your school actually works.

The canvas

The canvas is a visual space where your workflow’s trigger and steps appear as nodes connected by arrows. The flow runs left to right — the trigger is on the left and each subsequent step connects to the right.

At the top of the canvas, you’ll always see:

Save Draft button — saves your current changes without publishing.
Publish button — makes the current draft live immediately.
Enabled/Disabled toggle — turns the published workflow on or off.
Navigation links to Runs and Versions history.
A help icon that opens this documentation in a new tab.

Adding a trigger

Every workflow needs a trigger. Click the Trigger node on the canvas to configure it.

A panel opens where you choose the trigger type and fill in the details:

Manual — no settings needed.
Action Event Occurs — choose the event type from a searchable list.
Condition Becomes True / Stops Being True — build a filter using the filter builder.
Scheduled Time Field Due — choose a date field and enter the offset in days. A hint reminds you that negative numbers run before the date and positive numbers run after, along with a live preview (e.g. “3 days before Contract End Date”) so you can confirm the direction before saving.
Recurring Schedule — choose a preset (daily, weekly, monthly) or enter a cron expression, and optionally add a filter for fan-out.

See Triggers for a full explanation of each type.

Exit conditions

Below the Trigger bar, you’ll see an Exit condition bar. Click it to open the exit condition editor.

By default it says “None — run always continues to completion.” To add one:

Click the Exit condition bar.
Build a filter using the same filter builder used for Branch steps and condition-based triggers.
Click Save exit condition.

Once set, Kanri checks this filter before every step of every run. If a run’s record matches it, the run is cancelled immediately, no matter which step it was on. Leave it unset if you don’t need this — most workflows don’t.

See How Workflows Work for why this is different from a Delay step’s re-check trigger condition option.

Adding steps

To add a step after an existing node, click the + button on the right side of that node. Choose the step type from the menu: Action, Delay, Branch, Read, or For Each.

To insert a step between two connected nodes, drag the new step node onto the + button that appears in the middle of the arrow connecting them. The step is inserted and the connections are updated automatically.

Configuring a step

Click any step node to open its settings panel. The settings available depend on the step type:

Action step:

Choose the action from a searchable list (e.g., “Send message”, “Promote to next level”).
Choose the target (This record, Create new, or From previous step).
Fill in the action’s required and optional fields.
Use the [$] button next to any field to reference data from the triggered record or from a previous step’s output.
Optionally enable Continue on error to skip this step if it fails.

Delay step:

Choose Fixed time or Until date field.
For fixed time: enter the number of minutes, hours, or days.
Optionally set an execution window (only resume on certain days or times).
For condition-triggered workflows: optionally turn off Re-check trigger condition.

Branch step:

Build the condition using the filter builder.
Connect the if true output to one step, and the if false output to another.

Read step:

Choose the record type, build a filter, and select the fields you want.

For Each step:

Choose the record type, build a filter, and set a limit (the maximum number of records to process per run).
Add the steps that should run for each matched record, inside the loop body.

Connecting steps

Each node has a + connector on its right side. Click it to add a next step, or drag a new node onto it.

Action, Delay, Read, and For Each steps have one outgoing connection.
Branch steps have two outgoing connections: “if true” and “if false”.
A step with no outgoing connection is a terminal step — the run ends there.

Deleting a step

Click the step you want to delete and click Delete in its settings panel. When you delete a step that sits between two other connected steps, Kanri automatically reconnects the surrounding steps so your flow stays intact.

Saving your work

Use the Save Draft button to save your changes. The draft is not live until you publish it — saving just preserves your work in progress.

Publishing

When your workflow is ready, click Publish. Kanri validates the workflow first:

Every step must be reachable from the trigger (no disconnected orphan steps).
Required fields must be filled in.
Action targets must match the selected action’s expected record type.

If there are errors, they’ll appear inline on the affected nodes. Fix them and try publishing again.

Once published, the workflow is immediately live and its trigger starts firing.

Viewing a previous version

To see what an older version of a workflow looked like:

Click Versions in the editor toolbar.
Select a published version from the list.
The canvas opens in read-only mode showing exactly what that version contained.

Next steps

Publish and Disable — the full publish lifecycle
Version History — understanding workflow versions
Run History — monitoring runs and debugging issues
How Workflows Work — core concepts, including exit conditions