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Workflow Overview

Purpose of Workflow

Open Agent > Workflow to build automated workflows by connecting components on a visual canvas. Connections define the execution order; conditions, categories, and loops control which steps run.

Agents are commonly used in the following scenarios:

  • Answering user questions based on knowledge bases.
  • Identifying user intents and routing to different processing flows.
  • Calling HTTP interfaces, databases, MCP tools or custom code.
  • Splitting and batch processing long texts.
  • Saving session memory or exporting processing results.

Relationship Between Agent and Knowledge Base Q&A

  • Chat: Suitable for applications mainly based on knowledge base Q&A and multi-turn dialogue.
  • Agent: Suitable for business workflows requiring conditional branching, tool calling, data processing or multi-step orchestration.

The Retrieval component can be used inside an Agent to query knowledge bases. Retrieval can also be used as a tool under the Agent component, allowing the LLM to autonomously decide when to perform retrieval.

For example, an after-sales Agent can first use Categorize to judge the type of user questions, then use Retrieval to query product materials. If the user requests installation reservation, an HTTP request is used to call the external work order system. Finally, the Message component outputs the result.

Try a complete workflow

Follow Build a Customer Support Agent for a complete example with sample content, prompts, two branches, and expected test results.