This example demonstrates a customer onboarding process using Upstash Workflow. The following example workflow registers a new user, sends welcome emails, and periodically checks and responds to the user’s activity state.
Use Case
Our workflow will:
- Register a new user to our service
- Send them a welcome email
- Wait for a certain time
- Periodically check the user’s state
- Send appropriate emails based on the user’s activity
Code Example
import { serve } from "@upstash/workflow/nextjs"
type InitialData = {
email: string
}
export const { POST } = serve<InitialData>(async (context) => {
const { email } = context.requestPayload
await context.run("new-signup", async () => {
await sendEmail("Welcome to the platform", email)
})
await context.sleep("wait-for-3-days", 60 * 60 * 24 * 3)
while (true) {
const state = await context.run("check-user-state", async () => {
return await getUserState()
})
if (state === "non-active") {
await context.run("send-email-non-active", async () => {
await sendEmail("Email to non-active users", email)
})
} else if (state === "active") {
await context.run("send-email-active", async () => {
await sendEmail("Send newsletter to active users", email)
})
}
await context.sleep("wait-for-1-month", 60 * 60 * 24 * 30)
}
})
async function sendEmail(message: string, email: string) {
console.log(`Sending ${message} email to ${email}`)
}
type UserState = "non-active" | "active"
const getUserState = async (): Promise<UserState> => {
return "non-active"
}
Code Breakdown
1. New User Signup
We start by sending a newly signed-up user a welcome email:
await context.run("new-signup", async () => {
await sendEmail("Welcome to the platform", email)
})
2. Initial Waiting Period
To leave time for the user to interact with our platform, we use context.sleep to pause our workflow for 3 days:
await context.sleep("wait-for-3-days", 60 * 60 * 24 * 3)
3. Periodic State Check
We enter an infinite loop to periodically (every month) check the user’s engagement level with our platform and send appropriate emails:
while (true) {
const state = await context.run("check-user-state", async () => {
return await getUserState()
})
if (state === "non-active") {
await context.run("send-email-non-active", async () => {
await sendEmail("Email to non-active users", email)
})
} else if (state === "active") {
await context.run("send-email-active", async () => {
await sendEmail("Send newsletter to active users", email)
})
}
await context.sleep("wait-for-1-month", 60 * 60 * 24 * 30)
}
Key Features
-
Non-blocking sleep: We use context.sleep for pausing the workflow without consuming execution time (great for optimizing serverless cost).
-
Long-running task: This workflow runs indefinitely, checking and responding to a users engagement state every month.
