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A Workflow is an automation. It takes an analysis you have already validated, re-runs it on a schedule, and delivers the result to whoever needs it, without anyone opening Orion to make it happen. They scale with the job. The simplest is one analysis, one schedule, one email. A larger one queries several sources, produces a slide deck and a CSV, decides for itself whether the numbers are worth flagging, and mails different people depending on the answer. Between those two extremes sits most of what a data team currently does by hand every Monday morning. The recipe is fixed, and that is the point. A Workflow re-runs the notebook you already checked rather than working the analysis out from scratch each time, so the same queries and the same transformations produce this week’s numbers. You are not asking a question twice and hoping the answers are comparable.
Workflows are in beta, marked v2 Beta in the product. Existing Workflows keep running, but expect the interface to keep moving.

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Notebook vs Workflow

A Workflow starts from work you have already done in Chat. Get the analysis right there first, then automate it.

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What a Workflow is Made Of

Open a Workflow and it lays itself out as a graph of steps, running top to bottom.
Workflow view showing a graph of connected steps: a Scheduled Run trigger, the analysis it runs, slide deck and podcast outputs, a CSV export, and an email notification step

A Workflow graph

  • Trigger: when the Workflow runs. A schedule, or you pressing Run Now.
  • Analysis: the notebook that does the work. This is the recipe, frozen at the version you validated.
  • Outputs: what gets produced. A report, a slide deck, a dashboard, an audio briefing.
  • Exports: data rather than narrative, such as a CSV of the underlying rows.
  • Notification: who hears about it, and what gets attached.
Click any step to configure it. The set of steps is not fixed either, so a Workflow can grow new outputs and notifications as the need appears.
Opening a Workflow requires Analyst or Admin on the project. Viewers cannot open one at all, not even read-only. Your level can come from a group, so being a Viewer elsewhere in Orion does not necessarily mean you are one here. See Project Permissions.

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Finding Your Workflows

Each project has a dedicated Workflows page listing everything in one place. On the project’s home screen, find Recent Workflows in the side panel and click View all Workflows. If the panel is hidden, widen the browser window.
The project home screen's right-hand panel beside part of the chat input and content section. Recent Workflows and its View all Workflows link are outlined in red

Open the Workflows page

The Workflows page is where you actually work with them. Shared and Yours tabs separate the project’s Workflows from your own, and you get search, card and list views, and sorting by name, creation date, or most recently run.
The dedicated Workflows page with Shared and Yours tabs, card and list view toggles, a sort control set to Created, and a search field. Four workflow cards each show a preview of the workflow's graph, its name, creator, schedule, and last run

Browse project Workflows

Each card previews the Workflow’s graph, so you can tell a one-step report from a branching automation before opening anything, alongside its name, who created it, its schedule, the outcome of the last run, and when that run happened. A Workflow that has never run says so. Workflows are also indexed in Search under the Workflows filter. A Workflow starts out private to its creator, which is why a new one appears under Yours rather than Shared. See Sharing and Permissions for how to change that.

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Next Steps

Create a Workflow

Turn a finished analysis into an automation, in the dialog or by asking

Outputs and Delivery

Formats, templates, publish URLs, and who gets emailed

Manage Workflows

Schedules, run history, change history, and editing

Advanced Workflows

Decision steps and using metrics as the source

Best Practices

How to build automations that keep working