Okta Workflows How-To: Create Flow Backup and Folder Backup and Save them to Google Drive

Okta Workflows is a no-code platform for automating identity processes. The Workflows team holds weekly office hours where they answer builder questions.

This blog post is based on a question asked during office hours: How to create a flow or a folder backup and save it to Google Drive?

Getting started

Workflows has two cards to help with backing a flow or a folder:

• Flows–Export Flow
• Folders–Export Folder

Both cards work in a similar way. The Flows–Export Flow card creates a backup for a particular flow, and the Folders–Export Folder card creates a backup folder with one or more flows.

Here is an example of a flow that uses Export Folder to create a backup of a folder and upload it to Google Drive. The flow is scheduled to run every Monday at 9 AM.

Folder backup to Google Drive

The flow has the following steps:

1. Run the flow on a schedule (Schedule Flow)
2. Folders–Export Folder card creates a backup of a selected folder
3. You want to have a unique name for each backup. The Date & Time–Now card returns the current time
4. Using the backup file name and the current time, the Text–Concatenate card creates a unique file name
5. The last step is to upload the file to Google Drive using Google Drive – Upload File card. Parent folder ID is specified in order to upload the file to a specific folder

Flow backup looks almost identical. The only change is the flow is now using Flows–Export Flow to backup a particular flow.

Flow backup to Google Drive

Google Drive folder looks like this after running the folder back and flow backup one time.

Google Drive folder

I also recorded two short videos that show how these flows work:

📺 How to Create a Flow Backup and Save It to Google Drive

📺 How to Create a Folder Backup and Save It to Google Drive

You can also backup a flow to GitHub. Check out Versioning for Flows and Folders with Github template to learn more.

Get your Workflows questions answered

Do you have a question about Okta Workflows? Not sure how to build a flow? Join the weekly community office hours to get help.