Bubble.io API Tutorial: Schedule a Workflow on a List

In this advanced Bubble.io tutorial, you'll learn how to schedule a workflow on a list. This is an API-specific tutorial for working with your no code Bubble app.
This tutorial is a bit more advanced, but we often find that for some people, it provides the perfect solution to an ongoing problem: Looping a workflow on an unknown number of items.
While this lesson can be applied to tons of different situations, let's use Amazon as an example:
When you purchase 5 items on Amazon, you have the option to stay updated on shipping.
If each of those 5 items is shipped separately, Amazon will need to trigger 5 individual tracking codes so that you get updates for each item.
However, Amazon doesn't require you to click a button for each item to be able to receive notifications.
Instead, you click 1 checkout button, and you automatically receive reminders and notifications for 5 different products.
What's happening in the background is the equivalent of Scheduling an API Workflow on a List in Bubble. You click the "purchase" button, and an action is triggered to generate tracking codes and notifications for each individual item.
This can be used in tons of cases, and you'll see another example in the video above.
*Video Clarification: You CAN perform individual price changes to a list of items within regular workflows (e.g. Price = This Item's price + X), but other actions that refer to an item in a list (like sending separate emails) must be done in API workflows. Putting the entire sequence in an API workflow streamlines the process.*
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[@amineamine58]

If it wasn't for this channel i would have stopped using Bubble a long time ago. This channel is 100 times more helpful than the Bubble documentation + the forum posts combined.

[@coachingnocodeapps]

I'm so glad the videos have been helpful for you!!

[@tomaszwieczorek3310]

Uhhh you just saved me at least 10 years of my life xD

[@laurencebhansen]

Thank you for this, Gaby. It has cleared up a lot for me. There's more to your teaching than just creating the workflow. Little tips like opening a second browser tab for seeing both sides of the workflow invocation are very helpful.

[@coachingnocodeapps]

You're welcome, Laurence - I'm glad you were able to pull those little extras from the video. That's really great to hear!

[@Lekkerman]

Fanstastic video. What I like about your videos is that you don't cover the basic functionalities : what you demonstrate is pretty advanced and gives a good sense of the mindset one may have when developing on Bubble. Thx !

[@coachingnocodeapps]

So glad they're helpful, and thanks for your comment!

[@XCmdr007]

Great stuff! Thank you for taking the time to teach us this

[@coachingnocodeapps]

You're very welcome!

[@patrickclaussenSOA]

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! Worked perfectly for my demmand convertting registers of a table to another table, like Candidate Table registers to Talent Bank Table.

[@coachingnocodeapps]

That's awesome to hear - I'm glad it was helpful!

[@LydiaProvin]

Thank you very much for your tutorial. I was stuck in creating my workflow (the rows were created, but some fields were missing information) and thanks to your video, I understood that some parameters were missing :)

[@coachingnocodeapps]

That's awesome to hear, Lydia! Good work! :)

[@ian_gotts]

This was explained so well. Thank you

[@coachingnocodeapps]

You're welcome!

[@faskarzadeh]

This was an amazing tutorial. thank you.

[@coachingnocodeapps]

You're very welcome, and I'm glad it was helpful!

[@JoeCamTV]

Fantastic video. Thank you. This explains what I thought was a complicated thing in such a way that it's straightforward. I wish I could give it more than one "Like".

[@coachingnocodeapps]

Thank you, Joe! I'm so glad it was helpful for you!

[@julietillmantaylor1344]

THIS IS SO AWESOME!

[@programador-visual]

awesome as always, thanks :)

[@coachingnocodeapps]

You're welcome!

[@sarahesteve7409]

Thanks for this Tutorial !

[@coachingnocodeapps]

You're welcome!

[@DouglasTybel]

it's works fine! thank you!

[@coachingnocodeapps]

Awesome, Douglas!

[@paulgood6528]

THANK YOU! so helpful :0

[@coachingnocodeapps]

You're welcome, Paul! I'm glad it was helpful!

[@veshoegurung]

Great work

[@coachingnocodeapps]

Thanks, Vishu!

[@hyagors]

Amazing tutorial

[@coachingnocodeapps]

Thanks, Hyago!

[@carlosaugustocordeirodossa4912]

Congratulations on the excellent video lessons. Can you teach how to edit related tables in a repeat group?

[@reegunrufus596]

Hey Gaby, loved the way in which you made such an advanced concept look so simple, and a crystal clear explanation, Can you please post a video on how to stop an API workflow at the right time to prevent one from exhausting the work units! I've made the mistake of not stopping the scheduled workflow at the right time quite a few times which exhausted my work units, and it cost me a good amount of money to refill the work units, if you post a video on how to effectively use the API workflow and stop it at the right time it will be very helpful to me!

[@coachingnocodeapps]

I'm glad you enjoyed the video, and thank you for the suggestion, too! 👊❤

[@guyblueoceans9072]

very helpful video. I realize some APIs need to be run a) instantly (time sensitive) and some don't b) at a later time (non-time sensitive). As of 2022 do you recommend a "best practice" for choosing the INTERVAL LENGTH for either scenario?

[@MsPaulolG]

thank you!!!! thank you!!!! thank you!!!! thank you!!!!

[@coachingnocodeapps]

You're welcome!

[@tewley]

These are excellent tutorials, very clear and well explained. This gives a clear example of performing actions on a list when a workflow is initiated in the UI. What if there's a list/array as a parameter in an endpoint? Can anything be done with those? If so, it might be a great subject for another tutorial.

[@coachingnocodeapps]

I'm so glad you found this one helpful, Brendan! For the list/array, it just depends on what you want to do with it. One idea is to add or set that list value to a field in the workflow (this would happen for every item in the loop). Another idea is to include the list value in the body of the email - maybe it's a list of important dates saved to each Product. You can also trigger a 2nd "Schedule a Workflow on a List" action from the 1st API workflow with the list being the value of this parameter. Example building off the video: Say each product had a list of Reviews and you send "This Product's Reviews" as a parameter (set to list/array). At the end of the original API workflow, add another action to "Schedule an API Workflow on a List" (another API endpoint). The type of things would be Review and list would be the parameter value. The 2nd endpoint could then perform some action on each Review, which is ultimately happening for each Product. Make sense? It all depends on your use case. Parameters can be a single value or a list of values.

[@onkelmoates]

great explanation, awesome objective and clear... congratulations I have a question, do you know if there is a limit on the amount of processes that are generated in the backend? if I have a dataset of 50,000 items and process it Is there any problem? and if an error occurs within the process is there anything like try/except on bubble? thanks

[@juliomimiette92]

Top. Thx :-)

[@coachingnocodeapps]

You're welcome, Julio!

[@blablll1]

Great video! I'm trying to create a new list of Things by clicking one button. Do you have a video for that?

[@lancemerrill9723]

Did you ever find an answer to this? I'm trying to do the same thing.

[@jackychenbaybay]

Gaby .thanks!!

[@coachingnocodeapps]

You're welcome!!

[@ryanellis7156]

Hi Gaby, Thanks for the video. Really hope you can help me out here - how can you make the changes to the list run simultaneously so that all items update visually in the RG at the same time? I've tried splitting the API wflows for each product but doesn't seem to work! :(

[@htmlfivedev]

Great stuff but what is up with the low audio volume ... I'm at 100% on my system and still hard to hear things clearly ... 😞

[@coachingnocodeapps]

Looks like the audio had some issues!

[@adityarajak2913]

Hey Gaby, a bit advanced topic for me, but still interesting. Can you tell me how can I set the multi-selection input value from the drop-down, as in the above video?

[@coachingnocodeapps]

Hi Aditya, the multi-selection input is a plugin called "Multiselect Dropdown" that you'd need to install into your app from the Plugins section of your editor. From there, setup works a lot like a regular dropdown. The only difference is that your choice source needs to be a list.

[@AnthonyAllioo]

This may bring me over to bubble. I’m trying to do this on editor x but it requires complicated code. This seems similar, I’m trying to send a email to a owner of a item when a user submits a form and selects the item that is attached to that owner.

[@coachingnocodeapps]

Definitely give Bubble a try! Here's a resource that might also be helpful for you: coachingnocodeapps.com/bubble-guide

[@alanray124]

Hey! can you schedule an API workflow on a list of an unknown type. Like for instance, you get a list of search results and you want to iterate through them and save them to a database i.e. create a new "Thing" for each of the results

[@damianpaterson1751]

Great tutorial! Any chance you could do one to show how this can be done to send multiple users (a filtered list of al users based on a field criteria in the user table) a text message using Twilio?

[@coachingnocodeapps]

Hey there! You should be able to do that with this lesson

[@fleuriadon7765]

Hello Gaby, is it possible to modify a list of thing using only the backend workflows ? thanks

[@coachingnocodeapps]

Hey Fleuri! Yes it is!

[@rodrigooyarzun1051]

Hello! do you have any suggestions to run 2 schedule workflows in a row? From a multi-date selector, start time, end time, and duration, I would like to create multiple things. With this video you helped me to create one date-range (Start-end time) for each day selected by the user, now I would like to save that range divided by the duration, so for instance if start time is 1pm, end time 3pm, duration 1 hour, for 3 different days, create 1pm-2pm, 2pm-3pm for all the different days. Thanks in advance!!!

[@coachingnocodeapps]

Hi Rodrigo, you'll need to create a record for each calculated date and then schedule an API workflow on that date. You'll have to use conditions based on duration for the calculation. This would be a great question to submit to our VIP membership if you want to check it out: www.coachingnocodeapps.com/vip-membership

[@bavideomaker29]

Thank you for this. I don't think I would have figured out the passing parameters. But...how do I actually "schedule" my API workflow? This is all triggered from a button/dropdown. I want to send out emails (and SMS) to people simply based on data in the database. How can I do this in bubble? (if date=today, send SMS).

[@coachingnocodeapps]

Hey Brian! When you run the schedule action, there's a date and time you have to give it. You can use current and add days, months, etc to it

[@MustafaGhalib]

Thanks for the video. I am stuck because unlike in your video, my dropdown list contains a list of text which are not things themselves but rather fields in a thing. I want to create a new thing for every field that has been selected. Any advice would be appreciated,

[@coachingnocodeapps]

Hey Mustafa! It may help to check out our VIP Membership, where you can request content for your specific use cases - here's the URL: coachingnocodeapps.com/vip-membership

[@learner7478]

Amazing tutorial and super simple explanation. In my app I'm allowing the user to create a new inventory item and add multiple serial numbers to another type that's linked to the type "item" and I was stuck for a while not knowing how to implement this. Basically, I was trying to figure out how to iterate through a list where no page element is involved since the only iteration process I knew in bubble was in repeating group. I can't beleive this short video answered the question I had in my head for days.

[@coachingnocodeapps]

We're so glad to hear it was helpful for you!!

[@socialrepublic8853]

Gaby, thanks for this. I'm asking you for this as you make clear sense. Your video updates a selection of Products using a list of Products ... and both are the same Type of Thing (ToT) so there is no choice to make when Bubble asks for what the Type of Thing is. My intention is to update existing records from a CSV file, so the donor of the data is a different table / ToT from the recipient table / ToT. Could you make a video (ideally) or say more about what we need to do to import a CSV file into Bubble so we can: a] update existing records and to b] actually a link a record to another Thing via a foreign key.

[@coachingnocodeapps]

Hi there! Great question! We have a lesson on importing CSV files into your database in our VIP Membership. You're welcome to check it out here: coachingnocodeapps.com/vip-membership

[@maxp1273]

Hi ! Thank you a lot for this ;) I read the comments (maybe too fast) and could'nt know if these changes were saved in the DB ? Which brings me to ask if you can use Bubble as an API and display infos on other platforms ?

[@coachingnocodeapps]

You can pull data from your Bubble app to other apps

[@maxp1273]

@@coachingnocodeapps thanks ! And are the data saved when doing thsese changes through API workflows ?

[@dag7311]

Now, I am quite familiar with API workflows, however I still have one curiosity. In API workflows section there is a function "Return data from API"... What it is used for?

[@coachingnocodeapps]

Hey Daugirdas, great question! It lets you send data as a response. For example, you might want Slack to retrieve data from your app, so you could enter in a Slack command to call your endpoint and that action will send back data as a response.

[@Picklenicksasianadventures]

How much would you charge for an hour of your time? I am creating an App which will work as a telecoms/SIM usage portal using various supplier APIs to GET the usage detail and onboarded customers lists etc. I have a small issue that is the suppliers API specifies a required customer ID to pull inventory against that customers account so I need to customise the API GET call to make the customer ID dynamic in the call. I am currently thinking of doing this by adding a field to the user database called "Customer ID" so we can at least manually input the ID when we onboard them and then have pages that run an API GET call on page load using the "logged in user"s custom field "Customer ID". Long term, I am thinking I can use the ID returned by the "get customers list" call somehow to make it more autonomous. I have tried this and it won't work, it's not updating the API call with the dynamic ID. It only seems to pickup the ID when I input an ID directly into the API call in api connector. Any tips appreciated, failing that if you need more detail I am happy to pay for the time lol

[@coachingnocodeapps]

Hey there! We don't offer hourly services, but you're welcome to reach out to team @ coachingnocodeapps, and we can try to connect you with a developer

[@lucientavano9885]

Thanks for the great tutorial! It seems that the workflow is not being run in a reliable manner. Sometimes it is correctly run on all items of the list, and sometimes it is not being run on all of them, despite scheduling it on the very same list of just 3-4 items for testing purposes (I'm not setting any interval so Bubble can optimize). I'm trying to debug this by looking at the server logs. I see something weird: the API workflow name is not correct (every time, whether the workflow is applied to all items or not): "bTIdi1", despite the fact that the workflow does exist and does have a name. Any hint? :)

[@coachingnocodeapps]

Lucien Tavano Try deleting the Schedule action and re-adding it to your workflow. It looks like a hiccup from maybe a copied action, an older endpoint that got deleted, or something along those lines. Also, if you haven't refreshed your browser in a while, do that too.

[@lucientavano9885]

Thanks for the prompt reply! Another of your videos (copy a list of things) gave me a more reliable solution for my use case (duplicate an existing list of items). But I'll remember your answer in case I get stuck with a weird behavior like that again. Thanks a lot!

[@adamgeigerjr6995]

This is frequently asked for? How about a search workflow for looking up profiles from your database & adding new info via forms? Ex. First name, Last name, Address, License Plate, Make/Model, Color, etc. Typing in a Name or Plate number brings up a list of options, with a further option to select that profile and have an expanded, detailed view of the entire info of that Name or Plate

[@coachingnocodeapps]

Hi there! Absolutely -- many apps out there need to run API Workflows dynamically on lists of Things or just run workflows on the server-side in general. This tutorial is for those more advanced cases. To do the kind of search and record management you described, I'd recommend watching these existing tutorials on Search: kzbin.info/www/bejne/nXebnqOQqcuKgrc and kzbin.info/www/bejne/rH2rmnZqftZrq5I. Also this one on passing data to groups: kzbin.info/www/bejne/nJTHdWmLeqmShqM.

[@adamgeigerjr6995]

Thank you thank you thank you @@coachingnocodeapps