The Automation Engine runs event-driven, trigger-action workflows with a visual designer. When something happens in one system, it makes the right things happen in others. No code, no scripting, and it is the foundation every integration is built on.

What is it

A visual, event-driven workflow engine

The Automation Engine is one of the two engines inside the OneEnterprise platform. It runs trigger-action workflows: when an event happens in a connected system, the engine carries out a sequence of steps in response, across as many systems as the flow needs.

You design those flows in a visual builder by dragging and connecting nodes. A trigger starts the flow, conditional logic branches it, and action nodes push data, transform it, or call other systems. There is no scripting, no YAML, and no command line.

This is the layer that every integration platform starts from, and OneEnterprise has it fully covered. It handles the event-driven work cleanly, while the Business Engine handles the harder job of keeping shared records synchronized in both directions.

The two are not isolated. Automation flows connect to the Business Engine’s pub/sub bus, so a flow can subscribe to an event, a new Order or an updated Customer, and act on it, or publish its own event back for Business Connectors and other flows to pick up. Automations and connectors are two kinds of subscriber on one real-time backbone.

Automations are also flexible about what they carry. OES canonical objects are the star of the platform, and Business Connectors are restricted to them, but an automation can work with OES objects, native system objects, and custom messages on the same bus. That flexibility is why partners lean on automations so heavily day to day.

At a Glance
TYPE
Visual workflow automation engine
MODEL
Event-driven trigger-action flows
BUILT WITH
Drag-and-drop visual designer, no code
INCLUDES
Conditional logic, scheduling, error handling, monitoring
ROLE
Event-driven foundation of the platform

Visual flow builder

Design workflows by dragging and connecting nodes. See the full flow at a glance, with no scripting, YAML, or command line.

Event-driven triggers

Flows activate when something happens: an order is placed, a customer updates, inventory changes. Real-time, not scheduled polling.

Conditional logic

Branch flows with if/then rules, filters, and transformations. Route orders by value, flag exceptions, and apply business rules inline.

Scheduled workflows

Run flows on a schedule for batch processing: nightly syncs, weekly reports, monthly reconciliations, with monitoring built in.

Error handling

Built-in retry logic, dead letter queues, and alerting. A failed step does not crash the flow. You see what happened and can reprocess.

Monitoring dashboard

Track every flow execution in real time. See throughput, success rates, and processing times, and spot bottlenecks before they become incidents.

What an automation can carry

OES canonical objects are the star of the platform, and Business Connectors are restricted to them. Automations are deliberately more flexible: on the same pub/sub bus, a flow can work with OES objects, native system objects, or your own custom messages. That range is what partners rely on every day.

OES canonical objects

Handled by Connectors + Automations

The governed, canonical cross-system lane. The star.

System objects

Handled by Automations

Objects a system passes or expects in its own native shape.

Custom messages

Handled by Automations

Your own message types, defined for a specific flow.

What it is for

Making the right thing happen the moment an event occurs

The Automation Engine exists to remove manual, repetitive hand-offs between systems. When a trigger fires, it moves data, notifies people, and kicks off the next step automatically, so nobody is re-keying an order or chasing a status update by hand.

Order routing

Order placed in the store, created in the ERP, stock updated in the warehouse. One trigger, multiple destinations.

New-record onboarding

A new customer in the CRM kicks off welcome steps and record creation in the systems that need it.

Document and invoice flows

An invoice generated in the ERP is emailed to the customer as a PDF and its status tracked until reconciled.

Notifications and alerts

A shipment dispatched in the warehouse pushes a tracking number to the webshop and notifies the customer automatically.

When to use it

Reach for the Automation Engine when an event should trigger a sequence of actions

If the job is “when X happens, do Y,” the Automation Engine is the right tool. If the job is “keep the same record true in two or more systems at once,” that is the Business Engine.

AUTOMATION ENGINE
Use it when
  • An event in one system should trigger actions in others
  • You are moving data one way, not keeping it in sync
  • You need notifications, alerts, or simple routing
  • A scheduled batch job should run on a timer
  • You want conditional branching and transformations inline
  • You want to build and see the whole flow visually, without code
BUSINESS ENGINE
Use that instead when

  • The same record must stay synchronized in both directions

  • One Customer, Product, or Order lives across ERP, store, and CRM
  • You need conflict resolution, not last-write-wins overwrites
  • Writes have dependencies that must be sequenced correctly
  • You need a canonical source of truth and a clean audit trail

These are not separate worlds. Automation flows and Business Connectors share the Business Engine’s pub/sub bus, so automations can react to canonical events and publish their own. In practice you use both together on one backbone. See the Business Engine

What are the benefits

Why teams start with the Automation Engine

FAST TO BUILD

No code

Drag, connect, and ship. Business users and consultants build working flows without waiting on a developer queue.

EVENT-DRIVEN, NOT POLLING

Real-time

Flows fire the moment something happens, so downstream systems and people react without delay.

MANUAL HAND-OFFS

Fewer

Repetitive re-keying and copy-paste between systems disappears, freeing teams for higher-value work.

BUILT-IN ERROR HANDLING

Resilient

Retries, dead letter queues, and alerts mean a single failed step never silently breaks the whole process.

FULL MONITORING

Visible

Every execution is tracked with throughput and success rates, so issues are spotted before they become incidents.

A FOUNDATION THAT GROWS

One platform

Start with automation, then add the Business Engine for real-time sync on the same platform. No rip and replace.

This covers about 40% of “integration.”

Trigger-action automation handles one-way pushes, notifications, and simple routing. The remaining 60% requires a fundamentally different approach.

40% Automation
60% Integration
What automation handles

One-way data pushes, event notifications, simple routing, scheduled batch jobs, and error alerts.

What requires a shared language

Bidirectional sync, compliance logic, canonical cross-system queries, conflict resolution, and real-time state management across systems. That is the Business Engine.

Automation is the starting point.
The shared language is what changes everything.

The shared business language is the layer that no other platform built: a canonical vocabulary that makes your systems speak the same way. That is what powers the Business Engine, real integration, and real AI.