# Concepts

This section provides a detailed overview of the fundamental concepts that underpin the Automated Workflow module. Understanding these concepts is essential for effectively designing, configuring, and deploying automated workflows.

# Components

# Start Node & Triggers:

A workflow begins with the Start Node. The Start Node is an essential component that defines how a workflow is initiated. Workflows can be configured to begin in one of two primary ways: A Manual/API Trigger is used for on-demand execution by a user or another system, and can be configured with specific inputs (like files or text). An Event-Driven Trigger listens for and responds automatically to external events, such as a new email arriving in an inbox.

# AI Agents

These components integrate Published Automation agents from the Expert Agent Studio directly into your workflow. They serve as the intelligent core of many automations, performing complex tasks such as classifying incoming documents, extracting structured data from unstructured text, summarizing long reports, or making decisions based on provided context.

Explore how to design, publish, and integrate intelligent Automation Agents in the [Expert Agent Studio Guide]

# Integrators:

These are Out of the Box (OOTB) tools that enable your workflow to perform actions on external systems and services. Integrators are essential for creating end-to-end processes that interact with your existing enterprise applications, such as downloading a file from AWS S3.

# Flow Control:

These components direct the path and logic of your workflow, allowing you to build dynamic and robust processes. If/Else creates conditional branches to execute different steps based on specific criteria, while Loop enables you to iterate over a list of items (like multiple files or records) and perform the same set of actions on each one.

# Custom Functions:

These components allow you to execute bespoke, reusable code snippets. They are used to perform specialized business logic, complex data transformations, or any unique operation not covered by the standard set of components. These functions are authored in the Tools module using the Tools SDK, and once registered, they can be invoked as components within the workflow.

Custom Functions are authored using the Tools module. See [Tools Module] for how to create and register functions.

# Knowledge Garden:

This component allows your workflow to interact directly with an Enterprise Knowledge Garden (EKG). Its primary function is to Update a Knowledge Garden, enabling you to create automated pipelines that ingest new data into an EKG, keeping your organization's knowledge assets current and enriched with information processed by the workflow.

Understand how to create, enrich, and publish a knowledge garden in the [Enterprise Knowledge Garden Guide]

# Variable Assigner:

The Variable Assigner is a utility component used to update or reformat values stored in Environment Variables. It’s commonly used to reshape data from previous steps so they can be consumed by downstream components like AI Agents or conditional logic blocks.

# Environment Variables

Environment Variables are defined at the workflow level and can be used to store and update data during workflow execution. They must be created in advance and are referenced through the Variable Assigner component. These variables support structured data and are commonly used to aggregate values within loops or across steps.

# Error Notifications

This is an optional, configurable feature that automatically sends an alert via email or AWS SQS when a workflow execution fails. It enables proactive monitoring and rapid response to operational issues. By ensuring stakeholders are immediately informed of failures, this feature is critical for maintaining the reliability of business-critical automations.