Every automation in Krom Automation follows the same pattern: something happens on your site, and Krom Automation responds automatically.

That pattern has three parts- triggers, actions, and the workflow that connects them. Once you understand these three pieces, you can build almost any automation Krom Automation supports.

What is a workflow? #

A workflow is an automation you build once and let run on its own. It sits in the background, waits for a specific event to occur, and then carries out a set of tasks in response.

You build workflows on the Krom Automation canvas, a visual drag-and-drop editor. Each workflow is made up of nodes: at least one trigger node, one or more action nodes, and optionally condition nodes that add branching logic.

When you activate a workflow, Krom Automation starts listening for its trigger. Every time that trigger fires, Krom Automation executes the workflow’s actions automatically.

Triggers: what starts a workflow #

A trigger is the event that kicks a workflow off.

Krom Automation hooks into WordPress core events and fires a trigger the moment something specific happens. A user registers. A post is published. A WooCommerce order is created. A comment is submitted. When that event fires, Krom Automation collects all the data attached to it — the user’s email address, the post title, the order total — and passes it into the workflow.

That collected data is what makes your automations dynamic. Every piece of information from the triggering event is available for use in any action that follows it.

The free version of Krom Automation includes 16 triggers across five categories:

• User (7 triggers): User Registered, Profile Updated, Login, Logout, Role Changed, Deleted, Password Reset
• Post (4 triggers): Post Published, Post Updated, Post Deleted, Post Status Changed
• Comment (2 triggers): Comment Submitted, Comment Approved
• Media (1 trigger): Media Uploaded
• WooCommerce (2 triggers): Order Created, Order Completed

Krom Automation Pro adds 80+ more triggers covering form plugins, LMS plugins, membership plugins, CRM tools, e-commerce platforms, and more.

Actions: what the workflow does #

An action is a task Krom Automation performs after the trigger fires.

Each action does one specific thing: send an email, update a user’s role, create a coupon, call an external URL, or run an AI prompt. You can add as many actions as you need to a single workflow, and they run in order, one after the next.

Actions support merge tags, so you can inject live data from the trigger directly into any action field. You don’t hardcode an email address or a username — you use {{user_email}} or {{first_name}} and Krom Automation fills in the real values at execution time.

The free version includes 21 actions:

• Email: Send Email
• User: Create User, Update User Meta, Change User Role, Send Password Reset
• Post: Create Post, Update Post, Update Post Field, Change Post Status, Add Post Meta, Delete Post
• Comment: Add Comment, Update Comment Status, Add Comment Label, Add Comment Meta
• Integration: HTTP Request (supports GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE)
• AI: AI Generate Text, AI Content Moderation, AI Auto-Tag
• WooCommerce: Create Coupon, Update Order Status

How triggers and actions connect #

When you add a trigger and an action to the canvas and connect them with an arrow, you’ve created a workflow.

Here’s what happens when that workflow runs:

1. The trigger event fires on your WordPress site.
2. Krom Automation collects all data from that event.
3. If you’ve set a delay, Krom Automation schedules the next step to run after that delay using Action Scheduler.
4. Krom Automation evaluates any conditions you’ve added and takes the matching branch.
5. Each action runs in sequence. Merge tags are resolved to real values just before each action executes.
6. Krom Automation logs every step: what ran, what data was used, what the result was, and whether it succeeded or failed.

The whole execution happens in the background as a scheduled job. It doesn’t block your site or run inside the web request that triggered the event.

Conditions: branching your workflow #

Sometimes you don’t want every trigger to run every action. You only want to send the “welcome to the team” email when the new user’s role is editor, not subscriber. You only want to notify the sales channel when an order total exceeds a certain amount.

Condition nodes let you add that logic. Each condition node evaluates a test against the trigger data and splits the workflow into a Yes branch and a No branch. Actions you place on each branch only run if that condition is met.

You can add multiple condition nodes to the same workflow, creating multi-path automations that handle different scenarios from one trigger.

Delays: timing your actions #

You can add a delay before the first action runs. Instead of reacting to an event instantly, Krom Automation waits for a set amount of time and then executes.

Delays are configured directly on the trigger node. The free version supports delays in minutes, hours, and days. Krom Automation Pro adds week-length delays.

Delays are powered by Action Scheduler, which means they’re reliable even on high-traffic sites. The delay runs as a background job and doesn’t depend on your site being visited or loaded during the wait period.

Merge tags: using live data in actions #

Merge tags are placeholders you put into action fields that Krom Automation replaces with real data at execution time.

For example, if your workflow uses the User Registered trigger, you can write {{first_name}} in an email subject and Krom Automation will replace it with the actual first name of the user who just registered. You can use {{site.name}} to include your site’s name, {{order.total}} to include an order amount, or {{post_title}} to include the title of a post.

Merge tags make your automations dynamic without any extra configuration. Krom Automation resolves tags from the trigger data, from system-level values like the site name and current date, and from the output of previous steps in the same workflow.

Run control: how often a workflow runs #

Each workflow has a Run Control setting that determines how many times it can run for the same entity.

Run once per entity means the workflow runs at most once per user, post, or order. If a user registers, gets the welcome email, and then somehow triggers the registration hook again, Krom Automation skips the workflow silently. This is the right setting for welcome emails, onboarding flows, and anything that should only happen once per person or item.

Run every time means the workflow runs every single time the trigger fires, with no limit. This is right for notifications, logging, and any automation where each event is genuinely distinct.

Workflow status: active and paused #

Every workflow is either Active or Paused. A paused workflow doesn’t run, even if its trigger fires. Use this to disable a workflow temporarily without deleting it.

A simple example end to end #

Here’s what the whole system looks like in practice.

You create a workflow with the User Registered trigger. You set a 10-minute delay. You add a Send Email action with {{user_email}} in the To field and Welcome, {{first_name}}! as the subject. You set Run Control to Run once per entity. You activate the workflow.

When a new user registers on your site, Krom Automation catches the event, collects the user’s data, schedules a job to run in 10 minutes, then sends the personalised welcome email automatically.

You built it once. It runs forever.