Build Your First Workflow | Gail Documentation

In this tutorial you will build a small but genuinely useful workflow: when a new lead arrives, it texts them a friendly welcome and saves them to your contacts. It uses four steps, Start, Send SMS, Add Contact, and End, and takes just a few minutes.

By the end you will know how to add steps, configure them, connect them in order, and save your work. If you have not yet, skim How Workflows Run first so the canvas feels familiar.

What you will build

A lead named Sarah Chen reaches out to Chen Insurance Group. Your workflow will:

Begin when a new lead comes in, capturing their name and phone number.
Text them a warm welcome so they hear from you right away.
Add them to your contacts so an agent can follow up.
Finish.

The finished workflow on the builder canvas: Start, Send SMS, Add Contact, and End connected in order.

Build it step by step

Create a new workflow

Open the builder and create a new workflow. Give it a clear name like Lead Welcome and a short description so your team knows what it does. You will start with an empty canvas and a single Start step ready to go.

Add the Send SMS step

Steps are added from the step picker. Open it, find Send SMS, and add it to the canvas below the Start step.

The Add a new step picker, listing the steps you can add to a workflow.

Configure the welcome text

Select the Send SMS step to open its settings. Fill in two fields:

Field	What to enter
To	The lead’s phone number. Point this at the phone number the Start step captured, so every run texts the right person.
Message	Your welcome text, for example: `Hi Sarah, thanks for reaching out to Chen Insurance Group! An agent will call you shortly.`

The Send SMS settings panel with a recipient phone number and a welcome message.

To reuse the lead’s real details instead of typing a fixed value, point a field at a value from an earlier step. The builder offers a picker so you can choose it from a list. See Variables & Data Flow.

Add the Add Contact step

Open the step picker again, find Add Contact, and add it below Send SMS.

Configure the contact details

Select the Add Contact step to open its settings, then fill in the lead’s details:

Field	What to enter
First name	The lead’s first name, for example `Sarah`.
Last name	The lead’s last name, for example `Chen`.
Phone numbers	The lead’s phone number. At least one is required.
Business name	The lead’s business, for example `Chen Insurance Group`.

As with the message, you can point these fields at values the Start step captured so each run saves the correct lead.

The Add Contact settings panel with first name, last name, phone number, and business name.

Connect the steps in order

Draw a connection from each step to the next so the run flows top to bottom: Start to Send SMS, Send SMS to Add Contact, and Add Contact to End. The lines between the nodes are what set the order the steps run in.

Save your workflow

Save your work. Your workflow is now a draft you can come back to, keep editing, and publish when you are ready.

Try it out

Before you rely on a workflow, it is worth watching it run once. You can step through a run and see exactly what each step did, which makes it easy to spot a field you still need to fill in. See Testing & Debugging.

A run does real work. When your workflow runs, the Send SMS step sends a real text message and the Add Contact step really saves a contact. Use your own phone number and test details while you are trying things out.

Where to go next

You just built a working workflow. From here you can make it smarter: add a step that makes a decision, enroll the new contact in a campaign, or connect another tool your agency uses.

Nodes & Connections

Understand how steps connect and hand off to one another.

Variables & Data Flow

Reuse data from earlier steps to make your workflow react to real information.

Send SMS

See every option for the text-message step.

Add Contact

See every option for saving a contact in Gail.