Do workflows run in sequence or in parallel?

[jeffmccutcheon]

Do workflows run in sequence or in parallel? I’ve been told both. I can’t find a definitive answer.

Can I make a change to an object in step one and assume that change has been made in step two?

Can I make a change to a custom state in step one and assume that change has been made in step 2?

Question 2: Bubble help has told me to put half second delays between some steps because they need to time complete before moving on to the next step. The manual states that delays have nothing to do with workflows, only what appears on screen, which is it?

I have errors that occur sometimes and not others when repeating the exact same actions. All I can imagine is that sometimes workflow steps do not complete before others run and sometimes they do.

[dorilama]

https://manual.bubble.io/help-guides/logic/workflows/actions#the-order-in-which-actions-are-triggered

[tylerboodman]

@jeffmccutcheon

Do workflows run in sequence or in parallel? I’ve been told both. I can’t find a definitive answer.

Actions are triggered in series, but don’t wait for the previous one to finish. If an action relies on a Result of step x then it will wait for that previous step’s result.

@jeffmccutcheon

Can I make a change to an object in step one and assume that change has been made in step two?

No

@jeffmccutcheon

Can I make a change to a custom state in step one and assume that change has been made in step 2?

No

@jeffmccutcheon

Question 2: Bubble help has told me to put half second delays

The delay action is only for front end animations pretty much. They won’t delay actions plus hardcoding a certain amount of time is pretty rough because what if you choose 1 second and the action needed 1.05 seconds?

Tip: Order of Operation

Hey there, thanks for posting! If you’re interested in Order of Operations, you might check out this section of our Custom States tutorial: How to Use Custom States | Bubble Tutorial - YouTube Then, here is some information about Bubble workflow logic: For efficiency purposes, workflows run in parallel across the server and the front end. Despite the names “Step 1”, “Step 2”, it is important to note that a given step does not necessarily wait for the previous one to complete before triggering …

Or yea @dorilama 's link basically just answered it all…

[dorilama]

I didn’t see you were answering

[NigelG]

My rule of thumb is always, “Things usually work as you think they should if you step through in debug mode, and often don’t when you aren’t”.

[jeffmccutcheon]

I can’t believe I didn’t know this. There really need to be tool tips when building. It’s not at all intuitive to guess what runs when.

[jeffmccutcheon]

This seems to thwart the very idea of workflows.

For instance, lets say I trigger a workflow when an input is complete. In step one I set the value of something to the value of the input and in step 2 I reset the input. This suggests that bubble could reset the input before step 1 occurs?