Quick Start Guide ⏩

Below you will find a guide to quickly get started on automating your workflows.

Instructions 🗒️

After setting up your extension and signing in to the Sola dashboard (See: Getting Started), you’re ready to start building workflows!

The diagram below explains the steps that you’ll need to follow to deploy your automation.

First, go to the website where you would like to start your workflow, click on the Sola extension in your browser’s navigation bar, and then click on Start new recording.
1. You will be presented with a pop-up asking what you want to share. We suggest sharing your entire screen to ensure the extension is able to capture all parts of your workflow. If you are using multiple monitors, ensure that all steps relevant to the workflow take place on the monitor that you are sharing.
2. To scrape a value shown on the screen (to store as an output from your workflow, or to use later on within the workflow), click on Scrape and then highlight the value you would like the Sola extension to scrape. To finish, click Finish scraping. Note, you can only scrape one value at a time. Alternatively, copying values (e.g., ctrl + C) will automatically create scrapes.
3. Once you complete your workflow recording, click on Finish recording, then on Yes, finish.
Note: certain websites receive special permissions from Chrome and block recording. In particular, some Google/Chrome-related sites may not allow screen recording, including: new blank tabs, Chrome settings pages, and Google Suite apps (like Gmail, Google Drive, Google Forms, etc.). For these sites, we provide direct integration steps, available in the workflow editor. Please let us know if there is an integration you need that isn’t available to you!

<aside> 💡 Support for desktop-based workflows is available in beta. Please reach out if you are interested!

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Once you finish recording your workflow, click on Go to Sola Dashboard.
1. Click on the Import workflow button, and the workflow will be added to the dashboard with “Processing” status.
<aside> 💡 Processing time varies by workflow.

Depending on the length and complexity of your recording, processing can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. While processing, Sola runs multiple AI models, configures bot detection handling, maps site logic, and more. You’ll be notified as soon as processing is complete!

</aside>

Once the workflow has processed, Sola will send a Slack message to your notification channel. The status of the workflow on your dashboard will also be changed to “Needs Review”.
At this stage, you’re ready to review and configure your workflow using the workflow dashboard and editor. Some actions you’ll need to take to configure your workflow include:
1. Assign variables to dynamically modify values between each execution. Without variables, values entered during a recording are treated as constants in future executions.
2. Add conditional logic so the workflow behaves differently depending on the data it receives.
3. Learn more about editing workflows in the Workflows guide
After you finish configuring a workflow, you’ll need to mark each step as “reviewed and ready to run”, then save your changes to the cloud. Once all steps are marked and saved, your workflow is ready to run.

To learn how to programmatically launch and monitor workflow executions, please visit the APIs page.
You will receive a Slack notification/email when your execution finishes. This notification includes a link to the execution details page, where you can view screenshots of the run and review the execution outputs.
Currently, Sola supports remote executions only. If you’re interested in running automations locally, please contact us, and we may be able to enable local executions for your account.
Remote executions run on Sola servers. Execution details (including screenshots of your execution) are available for logging and debugging. You can customize notification preferences for execution details in the Workflow Settings page for your workflow.

Recording your first workflow 1️⃣

As an example workflow, try testing out the extension on the Travel State Gov website to collect travel advisories for different countries. Use the interactive demo below to understand how to reproduce the workflow on your end!

https://app.arcade.software/share/WSiM77xkk1KAaMWkAguk

Follow the steps below to recreate this process on your side:

Open the Travel State Gov website (or wherever you would like to start recording).
Click on the Sola recording extension and start a new recording.
Navigate around the site as you would normally when performing your process. In this case, we learn about a country and then scrape the content in the Travel Advisory section.
Finish recording. You’ll be redirected to your Sola dashboard, where you can then import the recording.
Sola will process your workflow and let you know as soon as it’s ready!

If you have any further questions or need assistance, please explore the rest of the documentation, and don't hesitate to reach out to our team via the shared Slack channel or by contacting [email protected]. We are here to help you!