Okta Workflows - Set our First Flow

 

Flows can be organised into folders and sub-folder. We can simply click on the + icon near the Folders and create a top-level folder or a subfolder under a specific folder (Access Requests in the example below)

 

 

Under each folder we have options like exporting (the contents of the folder) / importing a flow, duplicate the folder, rename or delete it.

 

 

We can add emojis to our folders to improve visibility and make it more fun 😊

The subfolders are shown in an alphabetic order, so if we add emojis on the beggining of the name, the sub-folder will be shown last.

 

Now let's select +New Flow to set our first flow.
We can give our Flow a Name by pressing the ✏️ pencil icon or Save or even the Run (if we are ready to run our flow)

 

We will be prompted to provide a name and optionally a description.
We can also enable (tick) audit log for this flow. This is very useful and ideally we should enable for all our flows. Press Save to Continue

 The logs can also be enabled under Flow → Save all data.

Still our Flow is OFF, not enabled and hasn't been saved yet.
Let's Press Save and also enable the part where it says FLOW is OFF.

 

 

 

The flow consists of two parts 

- Event: When / How the flow will be triggered to run.

- Actions / Functions: our automation part

 

 Our Trigger Event Options are 

- Schedule: Where we can specify a date / time when our flow will run. 

- Helper Flow: This can be called by another flow and process a list of objects, for example specific Okta users. 

- Delegated Flow: This can be run by another application outside Okta Workflows. One example is Okta Access Requests. 

- Connected App: Pre-defined events, such as user is unassigned from a specific Okta application.

- API Endpoint: Another External System triggers this flow 

- Manually: By pressing the Run Button

  

 In this case, we will keep it simple and we will select the Schedule 

The flow will run twice per week (Monday and Friday) at 06:00 Europe/London timezone

 

Now let's add a simple function.

Under Date & Time, we will select the Now function

 

 The Now card has a few outputs, for example date, iso, full, minute etc.

 If we press Run

 

We will be forwarded to the Execution History and we can see the different outputs of this card.

Be aware that each card has a specific data type as mentioned on the document.

Now let's say that we want to display the date/time in a different format. We can use the Text to Date function: https://help.okta.com/wf/en-us/content/topics/workflows/function-reference/datetime/datetime_parse.htm

 

We will move the date output from the first card (Date & Time) to the Text to Date input. As you can there is the calendar icon near the start, so we are expecting a value on a date format. Also there is an asterisk (*) near the start, which means that this is a required field. 

Our format will be Y-MM-DD HH:mm to display the date in YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm format.

Now let's say that the date on the Date & Time card and the output on the Date & Time card are not very descriptive. Let's customise them 

 

  

 Now we are good to go. We can save our flow and run it again.