In Agentforce Operations, blueprints, workflows, stages, tasks, and fields each play a specific role and work together in a clear hierarchy to automate business processes. Understanding how they connect helps you plan your processes before you start building blueprints and running workflows.
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This feature is a workspace that’s external to your Salesforce org and requires an Agentforce Operations license. To purchase an Agentforce Operations license, contact your Salesforce account executive. |
Every automated process in Agentforce Operations involves five key concepts: blueprints, workflows, stages, tasks, and fields. Each serves a distinct purpose, and they work together in a clear hierarchy.
Blueprints: The Template
A blueprint is a reusable template that defines the structure of a business process. It specifies the stages, tasks, assignments, fields, and rules that make up the process. Think of a blueprint as the instructions describing what you want to happen, in what order, and who is responsible.
Design blueprints one time and reuse them many times. A single blueprint can generate hundreds of workflows. Create blueprints from scratch, generate them with AI, or upload a file. Create variations of a blueprint to handle different scenarios, such as regions or product lines.
Learn more in Designing Automation Templates in Blueprints in Agentforce Operations.
Workflows: The Running Instance
A workflow is a single running instance of a blueprint. When you create a workflow from a blueprint, Agentforce Operations uses the blueprint's structure to generate the stages and tasks for that specific run. Each workflow has its own data, assignees, and timeline.
For example, if a blueprint defines a supplier onboarding process, each new supplier you onboard gets its own workflow. The blueprint stays the same, but each workflow tracks a separate supplier through the process.
Workflows start running immediately after you create them. Task assignees receive email notifications, and they can complete their work from the email or in the workspace.
Learn more in Run and Manage Automated Workflows in Agentforce Operations.
Stages: The Structure
Stages are groups of related tasks within a blueprint or workflow. They break a process into logical phases. For example, a supplier onboarding blueprint can have stages for Document Collection, Review, and Approval.
Stages can have dependencies on other stages, making sure that work happens in the correct order. When a stage starts, all tasks set to start with the stage become active at the same time. A blueprint requires at least one stage with one task before you can start a workflow from it.
Tasks: The Work
Tasks are the individual units of work inside a blueprint or workflow. You assign each task to a person, a team, a role, or an AI agent. Tasks can request information through fields and forms, require document uploads, or ask for approvals and signatures.
Tasks don’t all become active at the same time. Each task activates based on its start condition, either when its stage begins or when a prior task completes. When a user or agent completes a task, Agentforce Operations passes the information from that task to downstream tasks and triggers the next task automatically.
Fields: The Data
Fields are how information moves through a workflow. You add fields to tasks to collect data from assignees, such as a date, a document, or a number. After a field has a value, you can share it with downstream tasks so the information flows forward automatically, without requiring assignees to re-enter it at each step.
You create and manage fields from the Fields page, and you can reuse fields across blueprints. You can also create fields from within a task. Learn more in Collect Information from Users in Agentforce Operations.
How They Connect
The relationship follows this pattern:
- An admin or process owner creates a blueprint that defines the stages, tasks, fields, and rules for a process.
- A user creates a workflow from that blueprint, generating a running instance of the process with its own data and timeline.
- Stages in running workflows activate based on their dependencies. When a stage starts, the tasks within it become active.
- Assignees complete their tasks, filling in fields. Agentforce Operations passes field values forward to downstream tasks automatically, until the process finishes.
Changes to a blueprint don’t affect running workflows. To apply changes, publish a new version of the blueprint and create workflows from it.