Claris Connect concepts

Flows

Claris Connect is built on the concept of flows, which are a series of steps used to automate everyday business tasks and processes. For example, you can create a flow that adds a user's email to a Mailchimp subscriber list when that user submits a Formstack form.

Flows are automations that use two or more components. A component can be a Claris Connect utility or a connector to a third-party application ("app").

Utilities

Claris Connect utilities are predefined components that perform a variety of data and file operations. For example, the Images utility returns information about an image file. See Claris Connect utilities.

Connectors

A connector is a collection of application programming interface (API) endpoints from a third-party application. These endpoints allow Claris Connect to communicate with third-party apps and work with data between the two programs through HTTP requests. Connectors use these endpoints as steps in flows as either triggers or actions.

Triggers and actions

The initial step in any flow is a trigger, an event that initiates the automated flow. Subsequent steps in the flow are actions. After you create a flow, each time that the trigger event occurs, Claris Connect automatically performs the flow. See Using triggers and Action steps.

Note  Every action in a flow issues an API request. Your subscription terms determine the monthly limit on the number of API requests.

Projects

You create and use projects to organize your flows. Each project contains one or more connectors used by the flows. For example, you can create an Eventbrite project to contain all flows that use the Eventbrite connector. See Working with projects.

Templates

Claris Connect also provides a set of prebuilt flows, called templates. A template connects two apps with a trigger and an action. Templates are also stored in projects. See Creating flows with templates.