Shopify Flow is Shopify’s own automation tool. It makes your store do something automatically when an event happens – post to Slack, email your team, add a tag – without any code. Flow is a free app from Shopify; if you don’t have it yet, install it from the Shopify App Store.
This app publishes two events to Flow, so you can build workflows around your announcement bars starting and ending. There is nothing to switch on: the connection ships with the app. You can see both events listed under Settings > Integrations, along with a button that opens Flow.
The Two Triggers
These are called triggers in Flow. You pick one as the starting point of a workflow, and they appear in Flow’s trigger list under this app’s name.
Announcement bar activated – runs when you put a bar live. It passes the bar name (the name you gave it in the app), the bar type (simple, rotating, running line, typed or countdown) and the bar message (the first message on the bar, or empty if the bar has no message yet).
Announcement bar expired – runs when a bar’s end date passes, or when a countdown timer runs out. It passes the bar name, the bar type, and the total views and total clicks the bar collected.
When Each Trigger Fires
Activating a bar fires it straight away. Publish a bar with no start date, or hit Activate on a draft, and the activated trigger runs immediately.
Scheduled bars fire when they go live, not when you save. Set a bar to start next Friday at 9am and the activated trigger runs on Friday at 9am.
Reactivating fires it again. Switch a bar off and back on, or move its start date, and the activated trigger runs again for the new run. The same applies to expiry: extend a bar’s end date and the expired trigger fires at the new date instead.
Only a schedule or a countdown expires a bar. Switching a bar off yourself, or deleting it, does not fire the expired trigger. It reports bars that ran out on their own.
Drafts fire nothing. A bar that has never been published triggers neither event, and a bar created with an end date already in the past doesn’t fire the expired trigger either.
Variants never fire on their own. Regional, language and A/B test variants follow their parent bar’s lifecycle, so a bar with five variants fires once, not six times.
Countdown Bars
A countdown bar can carry both a scheduled end date and a timer, and whichever comes first is what fires the expired trigger.
The exception is the fallback expired message. If you set one, the bar keeps showing that message after the timer runs out instead of disappearing – so the timer is no longer the end of the bar, and only the scheduled end date fires the trigger. A countdown bar with a fallback message and no end date never fires the expired trigger, because it never stops showing.
Views and Clicks
The expired trigger reports the bar’s lifetime totals – every view and click it collected from the day it first went live, not the last day or the period you have selected on the Analytics page. A bar that ran three separate times reports the combined total.
Analytics is a paid feature, so these figures follow the same rule as the Analytics page: on the free plan both come through as 0. Everything else in the trigger works normally – only the two numbers are withheld. Upgrade to Starter or Pro and they start reporting real totals.
Setting Up a Workflow
Open Shopify Flow from your Shopify admin. Settings > Integrations in this app has an Open Shopify Flow button that takes you there.
Create a new workflow.
For the trigger, search for this app’s name. The two triggers above will appear.
Pick one, then add whatever actions you want – send a Slack message, send an email, add a tag, and so on.
Where an action takes text, insert the values the trigger passed. Flow lists them for you, so the bar’s name, type and message (or its view and click totals) can go straight into a Slack message or email.
Turn the workflow on.
That’s it. There is nothing to switch on inside this app, and if you have no workflow using a trigger, the event is simply ignored – nothing is stored and nothing is sent anywhere else.
Things You Could Build
Post to Slack when a bar goes live, so your team knows what customers are seeing.
Email yourself the views and clicks when a sale bar ends, without opening the app.
Send yourself a reminder when your free shipping bar expires, so you remember to replace it.
Notify your marketing channel the moment a scheduled holiday bar starts.
Related
Scheduling Announcements – the start and end dates these triggers fire on
Countdown Timers – timers and the fallback expired message
Understanding Analytics – the views and clicks the expired trigger reports