Call a Flow Flow Step

Use the Call a Flow step to trigger another flow within the current flow.

The Call a Flow step leverages flow reuse and can save you time from rebuilding existing flows multiple times. For more information, see Callable Flows. 

Guidelines for calling flows:

• For a flow to be callable, it must have a trigger type of On Demand.

• A callable flow may call another callable flow.

• A callable flow can’t call itself (recursion).

• A callable flow can’t call a flow that is calling it (looping). For example, if flow A calls flow B, flow B can’t call flow A. 

In the list of flows available to your workspace, callable flows are marked with a Callable tag. When you open a flow, the In Use By panel on the right of the flow builder page indicates which parent flows call that flow. You can select from these flows to view the parent flow.

Step Inputs

In the Edit Step menu, you can add details about the step configuration as needed for your flow.

Step Detail

Depending on the flow you call, additional property fields associated with that flow display in this section. The called flow dictates what data is available to pass to it. Add data to all required property fields. 

• Flow: Choose the flow you want to call. The dropdown list displays all callable flows available to your workspace.

Tip: Select View Flow to open the called flow in a new tab.

• Use Existing Input: Enable this option to use the output of a previous flow step as the input for the flow you call. The structure and data types of the existing input must match the input schema expected by the called flow. If disabled, you must use the property fields in the Step Detail to define the input for the called flow.

• Input data: If you enabled Use Existing Input, enter code to reference the existing input you want to use. For example, flow.step('create-an-object').output[0].

Note: Incorrectly formatted input can lead to errors in the called flow.

Step Outputs

The output of the Call a Flow step is that the called flow runs. The specific results depend on the flow that is called and what data is returned after it runs. When this flow step runs, you will see one of the following step statuses after running the Call a Flow step:

• SUCCESSFUL: Occurs when the called flow successfully completes, resolving to either a Successful or Failed status. 

• FAILED: Occurs when the called flow completes with an Exception status.

Example Use Case

For an example of how to use the Call a Flow step, consider the scenario of using two flows to transfer two companies' budget data from Vista to ProjectSight. Before sending this data between systems, you need to process each dataset. Instead of adding identical steps to process the data in both flows, you can create one callable flow to validate the budget data. This streamlines development and allows for modular usage.

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