The difference between an action and a condition

An action does something — send, create, update, move. A condition checks something and decides whether the workflow should keep going — is this field filled in, is this order over a certain size, is this the right kind of request. Confusing the two is a common beginner mistake.

If you put an action where a condition belongs, the workflow does the thing every single time, whether it should or not. If you put a condition where an action belongs, nothing actually happens — the workflow just checks a box and stops. I mixed these two up plenty of times when I was starting out. Learning to tell them apart is one of the fastest ways to go from confused to confident inside any workflow tool, because most tools list these as clearly separate building blocks once you know to look for the difference.

Read through your workflow and label each piece as either a doer or a checker.

Try this today: open one existing workflow and mark every step as either an action or a condition, and see if any are mislabeled in your head.