Okta Certified Workflows - Specialty · Part I

Architecting Flows

7% of Part I

Architecting Flows

Sub-topic 2: Plan Your Flow

2 sub-topics · this deck covers sub-topic 2 of 2

The Task

"Plan your flow including the apps, data, transformations and fields you will use, and when/how you will run the flow"

Once you know the task, planning means naming the apps involved, the connections you'll need, the fields that have to map from one card to another, and — critically — deciding the schedule or trigger that puts the flow into motion.

The Mechanism — Prep Before You Build

Before you build a flow, Okta's own guidance is to: learn the cards and fields you'll use, create a connection for the Okta connector (via Authenticate your Okta account), and optionally create connections for every other app the flow touches. Planning the apps and connections up front avoids getting blocked mid-build.

Planning the Data & Fields

Data planning happens at the mapping step: "Drag the output from one card and drop it in the input of another card. Be sure that the field types match." That's the whole transformation model — outputs feed inputs, and a mismatched type is the single most common build-time error.

Planning When It Runs — Frequency

For a scheduled flow, "Okta Workflows prompts you to provide a schedule" when you create it, and you can change it later via the clock icon on the Scheduled Flow event card. Frequency choices: Minute (e.g. every 15 minutes, with optional time-range and day-of-week restrictions), Hour (e.g. every 2 hours, on the hour by default or at a specified offset), Day (once daily at a set time), Week (a time plus specific days), and Month (an interval, time of day, and numeric day — e.g. a quarterly report on the 1st of every 3rd month).

Advanced Schedule Options

Exact — pick precise run minutes (Minute frequency only)
No earlier than — start when turned on, or on a specific date
No later than — end when turned on, or after a specific date
Timezone — the timezone used for the scheduled events
Summary — a plain-sentence readout of your chosen schedule

Also worth planning around: "Polling monitors default to checking every five minutes" for event types that rely on polling rather than a push trigger.

The Gotcha — the Countdown, Not the Clock

Once a scheduled flow is turned on, a countdown timer in the flow header shows the time of the next execution — not a calendar view of every future run. If you're planning multiple interacting scheduled flows, you have to reason about their timing from that single next-run countdown per flow, one at a time.

The Connection

Plan Your Flow is the direct follow-through on sub-topic 1's task statement — the apps/data/fields/schedule you plan here become the literal cards you place in the next section, Building Flows. It also builds on the Workflows Overview material already covered earlier in Part I, which introduced connectors and the console itself.

The Angle — What Trips People Up

Watch for this in your own sandbox run:

→ Setting an "Exact" minute schedule and forgetting it's only offered under the Minute frequency — switch to Hour/Day and that control disappears.

→ Assuming a polling-based event fires instantly — the default poll interval is 5 minutes, so plan for that latency rather than treating it as real-time.

→ Leaving "No later than" unset when a flow should only run temporarily (e.g. for a migration) — without it, the schedule runs indefinitely once turned on.

One Line To Remember

Plan the apps and connections first, plan field mappings around matching types, then plan timing: Minute/Hour/Day/Week/Month frequency, plus Exact/No earlier than/No later than/Timezone advanced options. Polling monitors default to a 5-minute check interval, and a live schedule only shows you the next run as a countdown, not a full calendar.

Sources: help.okta.com — Set schedule options (ext-set-schedule-options); Build and test a flow (ext-build-a-flow)

✓ Architecting Flows — 2 of 2 sub-topics complete