Shopify Flow Guide

What is Shopify Flow?

Shopify Flow is an automation tool available to Shopify merchants, designed to streamline and simplify complex tasks and processes. By using Shopify Flow, businesses can create automated workflows that handle repetitive tasks, enabling more efficient store management. 

This guide will walk you through how to use Shopify Flow, from setting it up, to creating and managing workflows.

How to Set Up Shopify Flow

To install Shopify Flow on to your store:

• Go to the Shopify App Store and search for ‘Shopify Flow’.

• Install the app on your Shopify store.

• After installation, you’ll be able to access it from your Shopify admin panel under Apps.

To access Shopify Flow:

• From the Shopify Admin Dashboard, click on Apps > Shopify Flow.

• You’ll now be able to create and manage workflows.

Key Components of Shopify Flow

Triggers

These are the starting points of a workflow. A trigger is an event that happens in your Shopify store, such as an order being created or a customer being added.

Conditions

These allow you to set criteria for your workflow. Conditions help to ensure that actions only occur when specific criteria are met. For example, a condition might check if an order's value is over a certain amount.

Actions

Actions are the tasks that are performed when the conditions of a workflow are met. For example, sending an email, tagging an order, or notifying the team.

Shopify Flow Examples

So what are the different types of workflows and automations that you can create and manage through Shopify Flow? Here are a few examples.

a) Automate VIP Customer Tagging

Trigger: Order Created

Condition: Order total is greater than $500

Action: Tag the customer as ‘VIP’ and send an email to the team

_________________

b) Low Inventory Alert

Trigger: Inventory Changed

Condition: Inventory quantity is less than 10

Action: Send an email to the inventory manager and tag the product as ‘low stock’

__________________

c) Customer Review Request

Trigger: Order Fulfilled

Condition: None (apply to all fulfilled orders)

Action: Send an email to the customer with a review request

These are just a few examples of the variety of flows that you can create, to illustrate the versatility of different ways Shopify Flow can help make your operations more efficient.

How to Set Up a Shopify Flow Workflow

• Go to Apps > Flow in the Shopify admin

• Click Create workflow

• Select a template from Browse templates

• Review the template to ensure it meets your needs

• Click Install

• Edit the template as needed

• Click the workflow name to edit the title

• Click Turn on workflow

It’s also possible to run a workflow manually by:

• Going to Orders, Draft orders, Products, or Customers in the Shopify admin

• Clicking the order, draft order, customer, or product to run a workflow on

• Clicking More actions on the order, draft order, customer, or product page

• Clicking Run Flow automation

• Selecting the workflow to run in the new tab

• Clicking Run workflow

Creating a Workflow in Shopify Flow

CHOOSE A TRIGGER

Start by selecting a trigger. Common triggers include:

• Order Created: (When a new order is placed.)

• Customer Created: (When a new customer account is created.)

• Inventory Changed: (When inventory changes.)

• Fulfilment Created: (When an order is fulfilled.)

ADD CONDITION (OPTIONAL)

After selecting a trigger, you can add conditions to refine your workflow. For example:

• Order Amount: (If the total order amount is greater than $100.)

• Product Tag: (If the product contains a certain tag.)

• Customer Location: (If the customer is located in a specific country.)

ADD ACTION

Define the actions that will occur when the trigger is activated and the conditions are met. Actions can include:

• Send an Email: (Automatically notify the customer or staff.)

• Tag a Customer: (Apply tags to customer profiles for segmentation.)

• Update Order Information: (Add notes, update tags, or perform other modifications to the order.)

• Send Notifications: (Automatically send messages to staff about order status.)

SAVE AND ACTIVATE

• Once you’ve set up the trigger, condition, and actions, give your workflow a name.

• Save the workflow and then enable it. 

• The automation will now run whenever the specified trigger event occurs.

Managing Workflows

Once your workflows are active, you can monitor them from the Shopify Flow dashboard.

View the performance of workflows, see which workflows have been triggered, and check whether actions were successfully completed.

You can edit workflows at any time to add new triggers, conditions, or actions.

If a workflow is no longer needed, you can disable or delete it.

Shopify Flow provides templates for common use cases, such as fraud detection, tagging high-value orders, and automating out-of-stock notifications. These templates can be customised to fit your store’s needs.

Shopify Flow Templates

The Shopify Flow template library provides hundreds of examples that demonstrate how to use Flow. In order to access the templates you’ll need to be logged into your Shopify store and you’ll be able to see a list of templates covering a huge range of scenarios, such as:

• Payment reminders (for example sending emails on or after a due date)

• Fulfilment (for example being notified about an unusually large order)

• Buyer Experience (for example tagging orders by their shipping method)

• Inventory and merch (for example being notified when demand increases for out of stock products)

Using Google Sheets for Shopify Flow

Connectors are provided by Flow to use features, such as ‘Add row to spreadsheet’ from third-party services such as Google Sheets. This action adds a single row of data to a Google Sheets spreadsheet.

To use connectors for actions such as this, you need to connect Flow to the service you’d like to use. In this example, that means connecting to your Google Sheets account:

• In the Flow editor, search for the trigger or action that you want to connect to.

• Choose the trigger or action that you want to use.

• If you have not connected the app previously, then you will receive an error message saying the app is uninstalled. Click Install.

• Follow the prompts to connect your account to Flow. You will be asked to log in to the service and grant Flow access to your account.

• After you have successfully connected the app, you will see details about your connector to the app. You can close this screen.

• Return to the Flow editor. Refresh the page to clear the error message.

If you’ve not already, make sure you check out Shopify Flow and follow our tips to automate some of your processes. You’ll be surprised at how much time it could save you, and also at how useful some of the flows can be.

If you need design, development or strategic support with your Shopify store, drop us a line and we’d love to have a chat about how we can help your ecommerce business hit new heights.