Retool Inc., a low-code development platform for business software, today announced the general availability for Retool Workflows, an automation tool designed to make the lives of developers easier by providing them a way to code first and then automate alongside tools for monitoring and maintenance.

Retool Workflows provides developers a quick way to prototype and construct periodic jobs, custom alerts and information management tasks that extract, transform and load data based on triggers with a simple visual interface that provides them a broad variety of coding tools at their fingertips. It combines a visual canvas for clarity and speed, but also gives them the customization and power of code building blocks that allow them to dive directly into software workflows.

“No- and low-code automation tools often do more harm than good,” said Jamie Cuffe, a product lead at Retool. “Automating your business can unlock a world of possibilities, but building isolated, one-off automations is not the answer. Teams eventually struggle to maintain and scale their creations without developer assistance. Retool Workflows directly addresses both challenges.”

Workflows integrates easily and can be called directly from user interfaces and can be used to build experiences like support dashboards and response centers, the company says. It can connect to anything and bring in data from local databases, third-party services, or anything with an application programming interface, including MySQL, Snowflake, Slack, GitHub, Jira and Salesforce. For cutting-edge artificial intelligence, it will connect to OpenAI LP’s large language models and image generators.

The objective of Workflows is to allow developers to bring their own toolkit. They can use the languages and tools they use every day within the interface by providing native support for JavaScript, SQL and Python, and also can import libraries just like they would in any other development environment.

For debugging, Workflows provides access to logs at the workflow and block level with historical data to make errors easy to understand. Custom error handling within the code can alert developers in Slack or email.

“We help developers minimize development and maintenance time, so they can build more automations right from the start,” Cuffe said. “And we provide a central hub for automations that can be securely monitored, maintained and scaled over time.”

Retool boasts a large number of business clients that have used its software to automate software solutions to provide everything from security alerts to AI-powered customer support. Companies such as Airbnb Inc., Kaplan Inc. and American National Bank have integrated Retool Workflows into their toolkit to automate business processes.

“We needed an efficient way to translate product data in our warehouse into timely, insightful reporting in Slack,” said Joel McLean, director of product growth at real estate company RE/MAX. “With Retool Workflows, my team can easily configure our resources in one place and focus only on writing the logic unique to our business.”

Retool raised $45 million in funding on at a $3.2 billion valuation in July 2022, alongside the release of Workflows the company continues to provide the tools companies and developers need to automate business processes and software at large scale.

Retool Workflows is now generally available with a free plan designed to allow developers to help developers start building automations immediately. Businesses can deploy it as a secure cloud-hosted or self-hosted service. More information is available on the Workflows portal page.

Image: Retool