Flow Automation: Finding Manual Collections via Action – SHOPLINE Help Center

You can use the Find manual collections action in Flow Automation to retrieve information about multiple manual collections in your store at once. Manual collections are collections that you add products to manually. You can filter the query by conditions such as collection ID and title, and then use the returned collection information in later steps of the same workflow. For example, when collection settings change, you can update product tags, publish products, or send email notifications to your team.

This guide explains when to use this action, its field descriptions, the applicable workflows, and how to test it, and provides a practical example along with usage limits.

Note: For more information about manual collections, please refer to "Creating and Setting Up Product Collections."

When to Use the Find Manual Collections Action

Use the Find manual collections action when:

A collection is created or deleted, and you want to query its information so you can promptly update the tags or collections of related products.
A product is added to a collection, and you want to retrieve that collection's information to update product details, publish products, or send a reminder to your team.

Note: This action only queries collection information. It does not modify collections or add products to or remove products from them. To act on the query results, add other actions after it in your workflow.

Field Descriptions

The Find manual collections action allows you to set query conditions and how the query results are sorted.

Field

Description

Query conditions

Filters the manual collections to query. Click + Add condition, select the conditions you need, enter the corresponding values, and then click Sure. If no conditions are added, the action queries all manual collections in your store and returns up to 50 collections at a time. Available conditions include:

fields: Specifies the collection fields to return. Separate multiple fields with commas (for example, id,title).
handle: The unique identifier (handle) of the collection, generated from the collection title by default. Maximum length: 255 characters.
ids: The IDs of the collections to query. Separate multiple IDs with commas.
limit: The maximum number of collections returned per query. Value range: 1–250. Default value: 50.
page_info: Locates a specific page of query results. When the number of matching collections exceeds the limit, use this condition to retrieve the next page of results.
since_id: A collection ID. The query returns results starting from the collection with this ID (including that collection).
title: The title of the collection. Maximum length: 255 characters.

How to sort query results (Optional)

Sets the order of the query results. Sorting affects the range of data retained in this query and how the query results are displayed when used as variables. Available options:

flowApp.updated_at_asc: Sorts by last updated time, from earliest to latest.
flowApp.updated_at_desc: Sorts by last updated time, from latest to earliest.

Applicable Workflows

The Find manual collections action is primarily used in workflows initiated by the following triggers:

Collection created
Collection deleted
Product added to collection

Testing the Workflow

To test whether the workflow successfully queries manual collections, follow these steps:

In Flow Automation, set up a workflow using the Collection created trigger and the Find manual collections action, then click Publish.
From your SHOPLINE admin panel, go to Products > Collections and click Add collection.
Select the Manual collection type, enter the collection details, and click Save.

Note: For details on creating collections, please refer to "Creating and Setting Up Product Collections."
After saving the collection, go to Flow Automation to check the execution results.

Note: For more information on how to monitor the execution of your workflows, refer to the "How to View the Running of a Flow" section in the "Introduction to Flow Automation" guide.
Open the workflow's run details and confirm that the Find manual collections action returned the information of the collection you created.

Example Use Case

Here is a practical example of using the Find manual collections action to automatically prepare new promotional collections.

Scenario: When an operations team member creates a new promotional collection, automatically query the collection's information, add the "Campaign Warm-Up" tag to the products in the collection, and send an email asking the team to review it.

Trigger: Collection created
Action: Find manual collections
- ids: [Collection ID] (the ID of the collection that triggered the workflow)
- limit: 10
Action: Count function (counts the number of collections found)
Condition: Count is greater than 0.
Action: Add product tags
- Product ID: The products in the queried collection
- Product tags: Campaign Warm-Up
Action: Send email
- Subject: New collection created: [Collection Title]
- Content: The new collection [Collection Title] has been successfully created, and product tags have been automatically added. Please check that the collection displays correctly in your online store.
- Recipient: Your operations team's email address
Outcome: Whenever a new collection is created, the products in it are automatically tagged and your team is notified, so no collection setup is missed.

Note: To insert the information shown in square brackets (such as [Collection ID] and [Collection Name]), click + Add variables and select the corresponding parameter.

Usage Limits & Notes

Query only: This action only queries collection information. It does not modify collections or the products in them. To act on the query results, add other actions after it.
Deleted collections: When the workflow is initiated by the Collection deleted trigger, the collection has already been deleted, so the query may not return any results. We recommend adding a condition before subsequent actions to check whether any results were returned.
Query limit: Each query returns up to 250 collections (50 by default). To retrieve more results, use the page_info or since_id condition.