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Launch via API

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Start a Tallyfy process automatically from another system

You can have another system start a Tallyfy process for you, with nobody clicking a button. When a deal closes in your CRM, a customer onboarding process can kick off on its own. When someone submits a form, the matching workflow starts and tracks itself. Your developer sets this up once using Tallyfy’s API1, and from then on it just runs.

This is for teams that want their tools to talk to each other. If you’d rather start a process by hand, by email, or from a public form, see the other trigger options.

What another system can set when it starts a process

  • Pre-fill your kick-off form fields with data it already has, like the customer’s name, the deal value, or a start date
  • Give the process a clear name so it’s easy to find later
  • Assign the right people, groups, and roles to each step
  • Set deadlines
  • Tag the process and drop it in the right folder

Common ways people use this

  • CRM: start onboarding the moment a deal closes
  • Document management: kick off an approval when a file is uploaded
  • Sensors and devices (IoT): launch an inspection when a sensor raises an alert
  • External forms: create a process from a form filled out on another site
  • Databases: start a workflow when a record changes

For developers

(Skip this unless you’re setting up the technical side.)

To launch a process, send a POST request to Tallyfy’s REST API. You trigger it from your own code, which runs when something happens in another system: a CRM deal closing, a form submission, a sensor alert, and so on.

What you’ll need

  • A Tallyfy account with API access
  • An OAuth Bearer token for authentication
  • The checklist_id (template ID) you want to launch
  • Familiarity with REST APIs and JSON

How to launch a process

  1. Get your access token - set up OAuth in Tallyfy and store your Bearer token securely.
  2. Find the template ID and the field IDs - grab the checklist_id from the URL when you’re viewing your template, then call GET /organizations/{org_id}/checklists/{checklist_id} and note the id of every kick-off form field you want to pre-fill. They’re listed in the response’s prerun array.
  3. Send the POST request - call POST /organizations/{org_id}/runs with a JSON body containing checklist_id and process details.
  4. Handle the response - you’ll get a 201 response with the new process data, including its ID. Add error handling for failures.

Pass extra data through the prerun object to pre-fill kick-off form fields. You can also set the process name, per-step assignments (users, groups, and roles), and deadlines in the same request.

Every key inside prerun is a kick-off field’s timeline ID, a 32-character hex string. That’s the id on each entry of the prerun array you got back in step 2. Don’t use the alias sitting next to it in that same response, and don’t use the field’s label. Keys like customer_name never match anything.

Sample API request

POST /organizations/{org_id}/runs HTTP/1.1
Host: go.tallyfy.com
Authorization: Bearer YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN
Content-Type: application/json
X-Tallyfy-Client: APIClient


{
  "checklist_id": "f7e6d5c4b3a2918070615243342516f0",
  "name": "Customer Onboarding - Acme Corporation",
  "prerun": {
    "a1b2c3d4e5f6a7b8c9d0e1f2a3b4c5d6": "Acme Corporation",
    "3c9d1e7fa4b820516d8e2f7a9c0b4d15": "15000",
    "9f2b7c1e4a6d8035b1c7e9d2f4a6b801": "2024-01-15T00:00:00.000Z"
  }
}

Those three keys are the timeline IDs of the “Customer name”, “Contract value”, and “Start date” kick-off fields.

See the API process launch guide for full details, including the value format each field type expects.

Launching > Triggers

Tallyfy offers seven ways to start a process, from manual clicks and form submissions to API…

Footnotes

  1. A way for other software to talk to Tallyfy directly, sending and receiving data without anyone using the screen. ↩

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