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Workflows are the routing and segmentation layer of Thread. They don’t do the customer-facing work — guides and Motions do that. A workflow’s job is to read each account’s state — the CRM fields, the data an agent gathers — and send the account down the right path: into the right program, with the right context, past the right human checkpoints. Think of it as the switchboard between your systems and your programs. A deal closes in Salesforce; the workflow decides whether that account is enterprise or SMB, whether a human needs to sign off first, and which path it takes from there.

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What a workflow does

A workflow is a visual graph of connected nodes. Each run walks one account through the graph:

Triggers

A CRM stage change, a manual launch, or a schedule starts a run for an account.

Branches

If/Then and Route By nodes read facts — ARR, segment, CRM fields — and pick a path.

Human gates

Decision nodes pause the run until a person approves, rejects, or reviews — in your Inbox or via a no-login link for people outside Thread.

Actions

Agent, CRM Sync, and Send Email nodes gather data, write back to your CRM, and notify people along the way.
Runs are durable. A workflow can wait days for a scheduled delay or weeks for a human decision without losing its place — when the gate clears, the run picks up exactly where it paused.

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Workflows, Motions, and guides

The three layers divide the work cleanly:
  • Workflows route. They decide which path an account belongs on, based on facts about the account. A workflow can also run as a play inside a Motion stage, handling the routing and plumbing between the stage’s customer-facing work.
  • Motions hold the program. A Motion carries the goal, the context, and the milestone exit criteria for accounts moving through a staged lifecycle. See Motions overview.
  • Guides do the outreach. A guide is the resident agent that texts, emails, and calls to drive one account to one outcome. See Guides overview.
A useful test: if the step talks to a customer, it belongs in a guide or a Motion play. If the step decides which customer gets which treatment, it belongs in a workflow.

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When to reach for a workflow

A deal reaches Closed Won. The workflow reads ARR and segment from the CRM snapshot, routes enterprise accounts through a human review and SMB accounts straight through, and each path ends in the right program.
Before anything customer-facing happens for a high-value account, a Decision node asks a named person (or any admin) to approve. The run holds until they decide — there’s no way to wave a batch through.
A Decision node with an external approver emails a no-login link to, say, the account executive who closed the deal. Their answer flows into the run and downstream branches can route on it.
A scheduled workflow runs on a cron cadence against accounts matching a filter — stage, owner, ARR range — and takes the same branching logic each time.

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One active onboarding workflow

Workflows triggered by CRM events that create accounts are exclusive: only one can be active at a time per organization. Activating a new one deactivates the previous one, so two workflows can never race to create the same account. Workflows that act on existing accounts — and manual and scheduled workflows — don’t compete for that slot and can run in parallel. Details in Running workflows.

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Who can do what

Workflow authoring is admin-only: creating, editing, activating, and cancelling workflows requires the org admin role. Run details are visible to every member of your org — when a run fails or needs a decision, the teammate it lands on can open the run and see exactly what happened, without being an admin. See User management.
Workflows read from and write to your connected systems, so connect your CRM first — see Integrations.

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Next steps

Building workflows

Triggers, branches, human gates, waits, and action nodes on the canvas.

Running workflows

Activation, runs, the run detail view, and where failures surface.

Inbox

Where workflow decisions and failure notices land for your team.

Motions

The staged programs your workflows route accounts into.