Best Practices: Build Smarter, Scale Better

1. Map Out Your Process First

Before you open Zenphi, create a simple flowchart of your process. Think of automation as breaking down a big task into small, logical steps. For example, “waking up and brushing your teeth” isn’t one step—it’s getting out of bed, walking to the bathroom, grabbing your toothbrush, adding toothpaste, and so on. Apply this same mindset to your workflow—define every small step clearly before building it in Zenphi.

2. Test Before Going Live

Always test your flow before putting it into production. Whether you set up a test workspace or simply duplicate your flow for testing purposes, make sure everything works as expected. Assign emails, tasks, or Google Chat messages to yourself first. This ensures formatting is correct and all actions are triggered properly—especially when sending bulk communications. Use the “Terminate Flow” and “Log to History” action to test your flow in parts and be able to monitor the output of different steps.

3. Import Tables First, Flows Second, Dashboards Last

When moving content from a test to a production environment, order matters:

• First, import your Zenphi Table schemas.
• Then, import your flows.
• Finally, recreate your dashboards manually.

This ensures all dependencies are properly connected and reduces the risk of broken references in your flows.

4. Save and Test as You Build

Don’t wait until you’ve made a lot of changes to test your flow. Make a few edits, save your progress, and test frequently. This helps you catch issues early and makes it easier to identify where something went wrong. It's much harder to troubleshoot when too many things change at once.

5. Use Descriptive Naming Conventions

This one’s easy to overlook but incredibly helpful: use clear, descriptive names for your actions, flows, tables, and variables. It makes troubleshooting and collaboration much easier down the line—especially when flows get more complex or are shared across teams.

6. Configure Auto Retry for Actions with Transient Errors

Set up auto-retry configurations for actions prone to transient errors, such as Google Sheets or HubSpot actions. This ensures reliability and reduces manual intervention due to temporary issues.

7. Securely Manage Sensitive Information with Zenphi Vault

Avoid directly storing API keys or sensitive information within action configurations. Instead, use Zenphi Vault to securely store sensitive data and reference Vault items within actions, enhancing security and compliance.

8. Use Variables and Vault Items for Constant Values

Make effective use of Variables (flow-specific) and Vault items (workspace-wide) to store constant values referenced across multiple actions or flows, such as IT email addresses, CEO names, or company details. This simplifies updates and ensures consistency across your automations.

9. Break Down Processes into Multiple Flows

Where possible, break down complex processes into multiple smaller flows for better management and scalability. For example, instead of using ParallelForEach to assign multiple tasks simultaneously within one flow, use ForEach to call a sub-flow for each task assignment individually. This isolates issues, preventing one failing task from impacting others and simplifying troubleshooting.

10. Use Set Run Name Action for Easy Identification

Utilize the "Set Run Name" action to assign an easily identifiable name to each flow run. This practice helps quickly distinguish individual runs, making it easier to monitor, debug, and manage flows effectively.