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Branches & Loops

Control the flow of your automations with conditional branching and looping.

Branches (Conditional Logic)​

IF / Else (Flow Builder)​

Add a Branch step to create conditional paths:

Trigger → Fetch Data → Branch
                        ├── IF condition is true → Send Success Email
                        └── ELSE → Send Failure Alert

Condition operators:

  • Equals / Not equals
  • Contains / Does not contain
  • Greater than / Less than
  • Is empty / Is not empty
  • Starts with / Ends with
  • Matches regex

Example: Route support tickets based on priority:

IF {{trigger.body.priority}} equals "urgent"
  → Post to #urgent-support Slack channel
ELSE
  → Create Jira ticket in backlog

IF Node (Workflow Builder)​

The IF node evaluates conditions and routes data to "true" or "false" outputs:

// String comparison
{{ $json.status }} equals "active"

// Numeric comparison
{{ $json.amount }} is greater than 100

// Boolean check
{{ $json.isVerified }} is true

// Regex match
{{ $json.email }} matches regex ".*@company\.com"

Switch Node (Workflow Builder)​

Route data to multiple outputs based on a value:

Switch on {{ $json.department }}
  ├── "sales"     → Notify sales team
  ├── "support"   → Create support ticket
  ├── "billing"   → Forward to billing
  └── default     → Send to general inbox

Merge Node (Workflow Builder)​

Combine data from multiple branches back together:

  • Append — Combine all items from all inputs
  • Keep Key Matches — Inner join on a shared key
  • Combine by Position — Match items by their index
  • Choose Branch — Select which input to pass through

Loops​

Loop Over Items (Workflow Builder)​

Process an array of items one at a time:

Trigger → Fetch 100 Contacts → Loop Over Items → Send Personalized Email

Configuration:

  • Batch Size — Process N items at a time (default: 1)
  • Options — Continue on fail, reset on each item

Looping with Code​

For more complex iteration patterns, use the Code node:

const items = $input.all();
const results = [];

for (const item of items) {
  // Process each item
  const enriched = {
    ...item.json,
    processed: true,
    processedAt: new Date().toISOString()
  };
  results.push({ json: enriched });
}

return results;

Pagination Loops​

Fetch data from APIs that return paginated results:

Set page = 1 → HTTP Request (page N) → IF has more pages?
                                          ├── Yes → Increment page → Loop back
                                          └── No → Continue with all data

Best Practices​

  • Keep branches shallow — Deeply nested conditions are hard to maintain. Consider using Switch instead of nested IF/ELSE.
  • Use Merge nodes to recombine branches — Don't let branches "hang" without merging.
  • Set batch sizes appropriately — Processing 1,000 items one at a time is slow. Use batch sizes of 10–50 for API calls with rate limits.
  • Add error handling inside loops — A single failed item shouldn't stop the entire loop.