Set up States in the Workflow

Applies to

Bridge by Smartsheet

For more information about plan types and included capabilities, see the Smartsheet Plans page.

States act like data collectors in Bridge workflows. If you are building a chat-based workflow, this is where questions are asked and user responses are stored. If you are building a fully automated workflow, the data collected from other systems is stored here too. The state's name influences the data references in the workflow.

You can add additional states by simply dragging one over from the top of the left hand menu, under Pinned Items.

It is good practice to add a state before each module used in the workflow.

Drag in new state

Each state has a number of settings you can use to build out your workflow.

  • If you are designing a chat-based workflow, you will need to use most of the fields in the state. 
  • If you are designing a fully automated workflow, only give the state a name and leave the other fields blank.

 

Name

The name you want to give your state. 

NOTE: This is the only mandatory setting.
Question

If you want to ask a chat user a question, this is where you specify what this question is. A question causes the workflow to pause and wait for a response from a chat user.
Retry Help

Provide a prompt or specify an example response to the user if they fail to answer the question with an expected response.
Values to Check For

A list of specific values to check for in the user's response to your question.
Contexts

Instead of identifying specific values, you can use contexts to check for data in the user's response to your question. Contexts are like a catalogue of expressions or words.
Answer

A final answer to the user’s response. 

NOTE: Setting an answer in a state will cause the chat workflow to stop.
Output

This is a data reference that you can copy and use to dynamically reference the output of this state in other stages of your workflow. 

If you want to provide a return response without stopping the workflow, you can type that text as part of a subsequent state's Question.