What is zenphi?
Zenphi is a no code business process automation platform specifically built for Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) users. It enables you and the whole set of new people in your company to automate their processes without writing any code. The processes can be anything from simple Mail Merge, Document Generation, or Incident Report to a complex multi-step contract approval, or employee onboarding. You could do all of that without needing to write any Apps Script or code. To get started with zenphi, there are a few basic concepts you need to familiarize yourself with.Flow
Everything in zenphi revolves around Flows. A Flow is the implementation of a process or part of a process. For example, if you may have a process for employees to request for a new laptop, in which an employee puts in a request, then the manager should approve it, and then IT should order the laptop. To automate this process, you create a Flow which starts by a Google Forms, (for employees to submit their request), and the Flow then identifies the requester’s manger, assigns her a zenphi task, and if she approves, it will send and email to IT or oder the laptop.Trigger
Something happens in the world, your world, the world of Google… or, it could happen anywhere, if you can send the message to Zenphi (email, HTTP), zenphi can take action. Once you tell Zenphi about the systems you want to monitor and the events that you’re interested in, we’ll continuously keep an eye on it. We call the event which initiates your process (or Flow in this case) Trigger. For example, you may want your Flow to start when a specific Google Forms is submitted or when an email arrives to a specific GMail inbox. So you need to configure your Flow to use Google Forms Trigger for the first one, and GMail Trigger for the second one. Each trigger may have some metadata which will translate into Start Parameters of the Flow. For example if your Google Forms captures First Name, Last Name, and Date of Birth. Your will have those values passed to the Flow as Start Parameters. Please note that Start Parameters are different from each other based on the type of Trigger you chose. Timer Trigger and Manual Trigger does not have any Start Parameters. If you have configured the Flow to use a Manual Trigger, you can start the Flow by clicking on the triangle button next to the Flow in the Flow Listing Page.Action/Step
Actions or Steps are the building blocks of your Flow. Each action can perform one of the following tasks:- Logic, (if condition, switch, state machine, looping, etc.)
- Interaction with another system (add a row to Sheets, post a message to Slack, send an email, assign a task, etc.) most of these actions require a Connection in order to be able to work the respective systems. We’ll cover connections next.
- Utility: (format date, multiple numbers, etc.)
- Auditing and debugging (log to history)