Workflows

Workflows — when this happens, do that

Every community has jobs that get done by hand over and over. Tag the posts that mention billing. Message new members after their first post. Add buyers to a group. Push reports into the chat channel your team actually watches.

Workflows does them for you. You pick a trigger, add conditions if you need them, and choose what should happen.

27 things to trigger on

Content	Posted · edited · deleted · hidden, locked or pinned · moved · merged · split · reported
Members	Registers · validates · logs in · updates their profile · flagged as a spammer · reacts · follows · joins or leaves a club · RSVPs · completes a course
Commerce	Purchase paid · about to expire · expired · renewed · cancelled
Other	Poll voted · file downloaded · club created

Every one of those is wired to a real Invision Community event and tested on an install with the first-party applications present. The trigger list only ever offers events that genuinely fire — you cannot save a rule that quietly never runs.

Conditions, so rules stay precise

Forum or category, author's group, post count, account age, content contains text, content matches a pattern, tagged with, title contains, is the first post in a topic.

For example: when content is posted, and the author has fewer than 5 posts, and the content matches a URL pattern — hide it and send yourself a webhook.

Actions

Lock, unlock, pin, unpin, hide, approve, add tags, add or remove a secondary group, award points, award a badge, send a private message, and send a webhook.

The webhook action is the important one

Anything your community does can be pushed to Zapier, Make, n8n, or your own code, as JSON. That means Workflows isn't limited to what this application can do — it's the bridge to everything else you already use.

Set a signing secret and each request is signed, so the receiving end can tell a genuine call from anyone who guessed the URL.

A run log that answers the real question

Rules engines fail when you can't tell why a rule didn't fire. Workflows records every evaluation, with the reason:

• "Forum 'Introductions' is not in the selected list."

• "Bob has 3 posts; condition was at least 10."

• "Content does not contain \"refund\"."

Filter by matched, skipped or errors, and by rule. Turn skipped logging on while you build a rule and off once it works.

Built not to get in the way

• Nothing blocks posting. Conditions are evaluated inline because they're cheap; actions run on the background queue. A rule pointing at a slow webhook can never make a member wait, and an outage can't stop people posting.

• Loops are impossible. "When a post is created, post a reply" would take a site down. The engine refuses to re-enter an event it's already handling — that's built into its structure, not a setting you can get wrong.

• Only sensible options are offered. The builder hides conditions and actions the chosen trigger can't supply, so you're never offered "lock the topic" on a member-registered rule — there isn't one.

• Actions report what they actually did, not what they attempted — including when Invision Community declines something, and why.

• Rules run in order, and any rule can stop the ones after it.

• No core files are edited. Upgrading Invision Community won't break it.

Requirements

• Invision Community 5.0 or newer (self-hosted), with the Forums application

• Nothing else. No external service and no API key — unless you use the webhook action, which needs somewhere to send to.

Commerce triggers require the Commerce application; club and course triggers require theirs. Everything else works on a stock install.

File Information

Submitter Ernest Defoe

Submitted 07/25/26

Category Members, Security & Admin apps for Invision Community 5

View File

Workflows 1.0.8 is out.

Fixed in this release:

• Workflows: AdminCP shows raw language keys instead of names