Actions

Automate Flax with trigger→effect actions — a control change, schedule, threshold, or button that fires webhooks, Slack, Discord, or email, with full run history.

Actions are Flax's automation framework. An action fires on a single trigger and runs an ordered list of effects. Use them to notify a channel when a metric crosses a threshold, to fan a dashboard control change out to an external system, or to give viewers a button that kicks off a follow-up. Manage them at /app/settings/automation.

Important

Actions never write to your data warehouse. They send notifications and call allow-listed in-app operations only — there is no path from an action to a warehouse write.

#Triggers

Trigger Fires when…
Manual A viewer clicks an action button on a dashboard.
Schedule A cadence elapses (hourly, daily, weekly — see Scheduled deliveries).
Threshold A measure crosses a comparison you set (>, >=, <, <=, =, !=).
Control A dashboard filter or parameter changes.

#Effects

An action runs its effects in order. Effects are isolated — if one fails the rest still run, and the run is marked partial.

Effect What it does
Webhook Signed HTTP POST (HMAC-SHA256 signature, SSRF-guarded, retried on 5xx).
Slack Post to a Slack incoming webhook.
Discord Post to a Discord incoming webhook.
Email Send email via Flax's mailer.
Flax action Run an allow-listed in-app operation.

Control triggers are limited to webhook, Slack, and Discord effects, and are debounced, so a burst of filter changes can't spam a channel.

#Run history

Every fire is recorded. Open an action's History to see each run's overall status — success, partial, failed, or running — with per-effect results (success, failed, or skipped), the trigger, who triggered it, and timestamps. Runs are retrieved from GET /api/actions/{id}/runs and de-duplicated so a retry doesn't double-fire.

#Access and oversight

An action has an audience that governs who it applies to and who can manage it:

  • Custom — owner-only.
  • Team — managed by a team lead or an org admin.
  • Org — managed by an org admin.

Admins and team leads see the actions they oversee under "Shared actions you oversee". A manual or control run authorizes by the caller's view access to the dashboard, then runs the effects under the action owner's identity, rate-limited per user.