Customer Onboarding - Upstash Documentation

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) {  // Implement email sending logic here  console.log(`Sending ${message} email to ${email}`)}type UserState = "non-active" | "active"const getUserState = async (): Promise<UserState> => {  // Implement user state logic here  return "non-active"}

Code Breakdown#

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.