Workflow Automation: Trigger an External Link

You can easily create intelligent links and buttons that tie in to the Item in Podio. Using the External Link flow, you can place these links into text fields like emails and comments. These buttons are the final product so creating these flows should be thought of in the reverse process.

  1. Create the External Link Flow with actions to complete when this Link (button) is selected
  2. Create the triggering Flow. The HTML Link created above will be in the token selector

In the following example we will send out an External Link in an email for a client to register for an event.

  1. Since you always have to show some sort of message when a link in an email is clicked, start by creating an External Link flow. Populate the message to show the user. You can insert as much data here as you wish, including links and buttons to other External Link pages. You can also choose to preform other actions available.

Here we created the External Link for the client to click for registration to a webinar. When this link is selected, it will also update the Item Category Field status to “Scheduled” Trigger External Link 1

  1. Create a Flow Trigger on Create Item and add the Send Email action brick. Compose your message body and insert the External Link HTML button and/or URL link you created above. (Note: Although you can drop html buttons into an email body, it would be a good idea to drop in the http plain text link as well just in case the user’s email client doesn’t do html.) These links can be selected from the Token Selector with all the other body fields.

Trigger External Link 2

Using the HTML Button will prompt you for the Button Text when you add this Token to the Action.

Trigger External Link 3

Now, when a New Client Item is added to the RVSP App, an email is sent to the Client about the Opportunity.

Trigger External Link 4

The Client can click “YES” or the URL link and will be taken to an external webpage that will display the message you created in #1.

Trigger External Link 5

The External Link flow is triggered, completing the Actions indicated.

Trigger External Link 6

See the External Link in Action using Comments in our Lab on Confirming Critical Changes

TROUBLESHOOTING

The external links generated by default cannot be decrypted. However, if you opt for a Base64 encoded link ( from ‘Options’ in the trigger box ), you can decode the link to get the string format: Flowid itemid

You can use the Flow ID to trace the error to the flow.

Workflow Automation: Trigger an External Link