Getting Started
- Complete the Quickstart: Product Integrations guide.
- Ask your coding agent to build the workflow builder:
“Build a workflow builder UI where my tenants can create automations between our app and their connected external apps. Use Membrane for triggers and actions.”If you want to learn how it works under the hood — read on.
How It Works
- Tenants connect apps — Using the Integration Catalog, tenants connect their accounts.
- They build workflows — Using your workflow builder UI, tenants create automations with triggers and actions.
- Membrane provides building blocks — Event triggers, actions, and data schemas from connected apps are available through the API.
- Your app executes workflows — When triggers fire, your app orchestrates the steps using Membrane actions.
Key Components
Event Triggers
Workflows start when something happens in an external app. Membrane provides event subscriptions that notify your app when data changes — viadata-record-created, data-record-updated, and data-record-deleted events.
You build:
- UI for selecting an app, data collection, and event type
- Backend that creates Membrane flow instances for event subscriptions
- Webhook endpoint to receive event notifications
- Event subscriptions for connected apps
- Data collection metadata (what types of data are available)
- Event payloads with record data
Workflow Actions
Actions are the steps that do something in external apps — create a contact, send a message, update a record. You build:- UI for selecting and configuring actions
- Input mapping UI (map data from previous steps)
- Execution logic that runs actions in sequence
- Pre-built actions for connected apps
- Input/output schemas for each action
- Action execution with automatic authentication
Workflow Execution
Your app orchestrates execution — receiving trigger events, running actions in sequence, and handling errors. Common patterns:- Synchronous — Run actions one after another, passing outputs as inputs
- Async with queues — Use Temporal or similar for reliable execution
- Parallel — Run independent actions concurrently