What is a workflow, and how is it different from an automation rule?

The two step types a workflow adds

After a workflow's trigger, each step you add is one of three kinds. An Action, which a rule also has. Then two more:

• Decision. Splits the workflow into a yes path and a no path based on the contact's information, filtering on contact fields, tags, email activity, registration dates, contact state or overall activity.
• Delay. A waiting period before the next step, set in minutes, hours or days, or as an exact date. Pick the exact date type and a timezone selector appears beside the field, defaulting to the account's timezone and applying to that delay step only.

Side by side

A workflow will sit there doing nothing until you switch it on

Activation is separate from saving. systeme.io's wording is that workflows are inactive by default, and one is switched on from the Workflows list, on the three dots beside it, then Activate.

Actions only run if the trigger happens after activation. Tags added or removed before the workflow was switched on are not counted.

A trigger is not optional either. systeme.io's wording is that a trigger is necessary, as it is the event that starts the workflow.

Switching one off has two answers

Deactivate offers a choice. Deactivate workflow stops new contacts entering, but contacts already inside carry on progressing normally. Deactivate workflow and cancel related scheduled tasks prevents any further scheduled actions from being executed.

Editing a delay does not affect people already waiting

Edit a delay's duration and it only affects new contacts entering that step. The ones already waiting complete the delay they started on.

The note is written about a delay step without distinguishing the types, and the only delay it refers to is one measured in days, so whether it covers the Exact date type is not spelled out.

What is not documented is whether editing a Decision step's filters afterward changes anything for a contact who already passed through that branch earlier in the same run, the way an edited delay leaves people already inside it untouched.

One thing a rule does that a workflow cannot

Picking a specific link inside an email. A rule lets you choose the email and then the individual link. systeme.io says that selecting a specific link is currently not possible in a workflow, so the pattern there is the Email link clicked trigger followed by a Decision using Email clicked.

What both share

• The same 20 activations per contact ceiling. What passing it switches off is not settled: systeme.io names the trigger, rules and workflows in one breath without saying whether it is that one trigger or everything for that contact.
• The same one minute cooldown on Email link clicked.
• The same one month of history, after which past tasks are cleaned away.

A workflow can be handed to another account

The three dots offer Share, which produces a link. What arrives is a template of the workflow, and systeme.io does not say which connected assets come with it.

Four things do not travel. The Blog page form subscribed and Creator store form subscribed triggers, and the Add a new row to a Google Sheet and Send webhook actions.

Which one do I want?

• Something has to happen immediately after an event: a rule.
• Something has to wait, or take a different path depending on what the contact did: a workflow.