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This guide walks you through creating, testing, and publishing your first workflow. By the end, you’ll have a working automation ready to run.

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Before You Start

  • Navigate to your team in the left panel
  • Select the Workflows tab

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Create Your First Workflow

1

Start a new workflow

Click New Workflow in the top right corner. Choose a workflow type or let Serval decide based on your description
Navigating to the workflows section and clicking New Workflow button
2

Describe what you want

Tell Serval what you want to automate in plain language. Be specific about:
  • What the workflow should do
  • When it should run (if not manual)
  • Which apps it should connect to
The workflow builder will ask follow-up questions if it needs clarification.Example prompts:
  • “Reset a user’s password in Okta and send them a Slack DM with instructions”
  • “Every Monday at 9am, list open tickets older than 7 days and post to #it-ops”
  • “When a user is added to the Engineering group in Okta, add them to the engineering GitHub team”
    Typing a workflow description and Serval building the workflow
3

Review the generated workflow

Watch as Serval builds your workflow in real-time. When complete, you’ll see:
  • A visual diagram of each step
  • The generated code (editable if needed)
  • A summary of what the workflow does
Request changes by typing in the chat: “Add an approval step before resetting the password” or “Also send a confirmation email.”
Workflow builder showing generated code and visual diagram
4

Test your workflow

Click Run to test the workflow before publishing. The run panel shows:
  • Each step’s execution status
  • Input/output data at each step
  • Any errors with details
Running a workflow test and viewing execution results
5

Publish

Once testing confirms the workflow works correctly, click Publish to make it available.
  • Help desk workflows become available to the help desk agent immediately
  • Scheduled workflows start running on their configured schedule
  • Team-only workflows appear in your team’s workflow list

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Configure Your Workflow

After creating a workflow, you can configure additional settings:

Workflow Types

Configure when workflows run: manually, on schedule, or via webhook

Approvals

Require approval before sensitive workflows execute

Inputs

Collect information from users before the workflow runs

Execution Scope

Control who can run the workflow: org-wide or team-only

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Tips for Better Workflows

Be specific

“Reset Okta password” works better than “help with access”

Name your apps

Mention which integrations to use: “in Slack,” “via GitHub,” “using Okta”

Iterate

Start simple, test, then add complexity through follow-up prompts