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AI Agents & Orchestration
Brad Griffith
Nov 11, 2026
An agentic workflow is a business process in which an AI agent decides what to do next, and deterministic steps carry out the work. The agent reads the request, picks the tools or steps, and handles exceptions, while governed actions write to systems such as Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Workday. Workato builds agentic workflows from Genies built in Agent Studio, recipes, and Enterprise Skills, running on a platform with a 99.99% SLA and 1 trillion+ tasks processed.
The distinction from a traditional workflow is where the decisions live. A traditional workflow follows a path a person drew in advance. An agentic workflow lets a model choose among paths at run time, within limits the enterprise sets.
How does an agentic workflow work?
An agentic workflow runs in a loop. The agent receives a goal, reasons about the next step, calls a tool, reads the result, and repeats until the goal is met or a person has to step in. The tool calls are where the business work happens.
In Workato, an event or a user request starts a Genie, and the Genie calls skills, recipes, and MCP servers. Genies also respond to events, so a trigger in a business application starts the agent without anyone typing a prompt. Each tool call runs under the end user’s own connection to the downstream system, so the record shows who the agent acted for.
What are the parts of an agentic workflow?
An agentic workflow has five parts: a trigger, an agent, tools, guardrails, and a record.
Each part maps to something you can inspect and assign an owner. The trigger and the record bookend the run, while the agent and its tools do the work in the middle. Guardrails wrap the whole thing.
How is an agentic workflow different from a chatbot?
A chatbot answers “What is my PTO balance?” An agentic workflow answers the request, files the time-off request in Workday, notifies the manager in Slack, and records the outcome. That is the difference in practice: a chatbot retrieves information or acts inside one application, while an agentic workflow completes work across systems. Workato Genies run across business applications through the same platform that runs integrations, which is how a single request crosses several systems under one set of controls.
What does a real agentic workflow look like?
A refund workflow shows the pattern. A support agent receives a customer request, looks up the order, decides whether the refund falls inside policy, and either completes it or routes it for approval. The approval step is a skill with a person in it: a skill can send an invoice over $10,000 to Slack, and the Genie resumes once the approval arrives. Workato recommends starting with every item reviewed and relaxing review as false-positive and false-negative rates fall.
Which steps should be deterministic?
Put the steps that write to systems of record on the deterministic side, and let the agent interpret intent. A model is good at reading an email and deciding what it asks. It is a poor place to put the sequence of calls that posts a journal entry. Enterprise Skills package a multi-step business action with deterministic output and errors handled inside the skill, so the agent gets a clean response. Our piece on which agentic workflow steps should be deterministic covers the decision test.
What are the risks of agentic workflows?
The main risks are unauthorized actions, bad data in prompts, runaway cost, and unreviewed behavior, and each has a control. Running tools under the end user’s own permissions through Verified User Access limits unauthorized actions. Guardrails handle sensitive data: Genies offer content-safety screening at low, medium, or high, with 31 default PII types plus custom regex types, and you choose whether to tokenize, redact, or refuse, plus denied topics and blocked words. Token and rate limits at the Model Gateway hold cost down, and conversation traces show each guardrail check, LLM call, and tool call so you can review behavior.
What do you need to run agentic workflows in production?
Production needs four things: identity, governed tools, observability, and a lifecycle. Identity means a named owner for each agent and a known user for each run. Governed tools means the agent can reach only the skills and servers it has been given. Observability means a way to see what each run did, and lifecycle means a way to test before release. Enterprise Skills carry their own version control and a development, test, and production lifecycle. Job history shows who asked for what and what was retrieved, and log streaming can send records to an external SIEM.
How do you start with agentic workflows?
Start with one process that has clear inputs, a measurable outcome, and a person who can approve the edge cases. IT requests, employee onboarding, and support triage fit well. Build the deterministic steps first as skills, then give a Genie the choice among them, with a human approval step on anything consequential. Expand when the review rate drops.
Summary: What Are Agentic Workflows?
An agentic workflow lets an agent decide and deterministic steps execute. The agent chooses the next step, while Enterprise Skills and recipes carry out the work. Verified User Access runs each action as the real user, and guardrails, approvals, and traces keep the workflow reviewable. Start with one bounded process and relax review as results hold.
FAQ
What is the difference between an agentic workflow and an AI workflow?
An AI workflow adds a model step to a fixed path. An agentic workflow lets the model choose among paths at run time.
Are agentic workflows safe for enterprise use?
They can be when tools run under the user’s own permissions, data is masked, and consequential steps need approval.
What is the difference between agentic workflows and RPA?
RPA repeats a recorded sequence of interface actions. Agentic workflows decide the sequence from the request and call governed tools.
Do agentic workflows replace recipes?
No. Recipes and Enterprise Skills are the deterministic layer that agents call.
What platform do I need?
A platform that runs the agent, governs the tools, and performs the work. Workato combines Agent Studio, Enterprise Skills, and Enterprise MCP.
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