Building Flows

A flow moves data from one or more source systems to one or more destination systems. It runs on a schedule, in response to events (webhooks, listeners), or when triggered by another flow. Flows are the primary way integrations get work done in Celigo.

A flow has page generators (exports that fetch data) and page processors (imports and lookups that process each record). Processors run sequentially in a flat list, or conditionally through routers that branch records to different paths. These processing pipeline mechanics -- routers, branches, page processors, response mapping -- are shared with APIs and tools (see building-apis and building-tools).

What Starts a Flow

Flows start themselves -- this is the biggest thing that separates them from APIs (invoked by an HTTP caller) and tools (invoked by a consumer). Every flow begins with one or more page generators, of two kinds:

• Scheduled exports -- the flow runs on a cron cadence and each run pulls from the source: everything (full sync), only what changed since the last run (delta sync), records matching a query, or files landed in an FTP/SFTP/S3 folder. The right primitive for batch work: nightly reconciliations, hourly delta syncs, backfills, off-peak windows.
• Listeners -- the source pushes to the flow. A webhook fires (or a NetSuite/Salesforce native real-time event triggers) and the payload immediately starts flowing. No schedule; the flow runs as events arrive. The right primitive for event-driven work ("when X happens, do Y"), especially when latency matters.

A flow can mix both, and multi-generator designs are common: