Skip to content
Orvanta Docs

Flows Quickstart

Overview

Section titled “Overview”

Orvanta’s flows are state machines represented as Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs) that compose scripts together. Scripts are at the basis of flows and apps, allowing you to build distributed workflows by sequencing actions, triggers, approvals, and error handlers.

This DAG canvas — DAG Flow — is one of three flow authoring models. If your team thinks in BPMN process notation, or you’re migrating from Camunda/Flowable, see BPMN Flow. If the orchestration logic is easier to write as a program than to wire as a graph, see Code Flow. All three compile to the same kind of artifact and share one execution engine — see Choosing a flow authoring model for a full comparison, or Flows as artifacts for the shared artifact model.

Key features

Section titled “Key features”

Data exchange: Flows exchange data between steps using:

  • Static values (fixed constants)
  • Flow environment variables (accessible via flow_env.VARIABLE_NAME)
  • Dynamic linking to previous step outputs via JSON objects

Shared directory: For heavy ETLs and non-JSON outputs, the ./shared folder allows data persistence between steps beyond result-based passing.

Core components

Section titled “Core components”

The flow editor supports four script types:

  • Action (default step type)
  • Trigger (conditional execution)
  • Approval (security and control gates)
  • Error Handler (failure management)

Advanced workflow patterns include:

  • For loops and while loops for iteration
  • Branching (conditional execution via “Branch one” or parallel “Branch all”)
  • Retry mechanisms with customizable attempts and delays
  • Suspend/approval steps for manual intervention

Triggering & testing

Section titled “Triggering & testing”

Flows activate through:

  • Autogenerated UI from the editor
  • Orvanta Apps (customized interfaces)
  • Scheduled triggers using CRON expressions
  • CLI execution
  • Webhook invocation
  • Trigger scripts with conditional logic

You can test individual steps or entire flows up to specific points before deployment.

Alternative approaches

Section titled “Alternative approaches”

Code Flow allows defining jobs and dependencies within Python or TypeScript scripts as an alternative to visual flow composition. BPMN Flow is a second alternative for teams that want standards-based BPMN 2.0 process notation instead of Orvanta’s own DAG canvas.