Flows actions overview

An action is a flow that's deployed in the Postman cloud. Unlike flow modules, which must be run manually, actions can be triggered by external systems like webhooks, third-party apps, or other APIs. Actions are useful for running automations and exposing functionality as an API or as an AI tool for MCP servers.

Actions can process incoming data and return structured responses. Once deployed, an action gets a unique cloud-hosted URL. An action's URL is useful for tasks like automating business logic, handling webhooks, integrating with external services, or powering AI-driven tools on MCP servers.

Local and deployed actions run in the Postman cloud and don't support private APIs.

Actions are available in Postman version 11.42.3 and later.

To learn about creating and deploying actions, see Deploy flows as actions in Postman Flows.

Manage long-running actions

Actions typically send out any data they produce as HTTP response bodies. This holds true for any action that finishes running in less than the Timeout duration. The data flows through the Response block.

The maximum Timeout is 30 seconds. If your action requires longer to run, contact Postman support to request an increase of the maximum timeout value to 60 seconds.

Once the Timeout interval has elapsed, the Response block sends out a 408 Request Timeout error. The action will continue running for up to 60 minutes, at which point it will automatically stop.

If your action requires over 60 seconds to run, it won't be able to send out data from the Response block. Instead, design your action to be asynchronous.

Deploy actions with snapshots

Actions can be deployed in the Postman cloud. Once deployed, an action has a unique URL. You and other users can send requests to the action's URL and receive responses from it.

As with flow modules, you can create and restore different snapshots of an action. Snapshots are like different versions of an action. When you deploy an action to make it publicly available in the Postman cloud, you can deploy a new snapshot or an existing one.

If you deploy an existing snapshot, the local version of your action doesn't automatically restore the snapshot when you deploy it. To learn about restoring snapshots and more, see Version flows with snapshots.

Bearer tokens in actions

You can configure actions to authorize requests with a bearer token. Bearer tokens make actions more secure by only granting access to requests that include the token.

Learn how to enforce bearer token authorization for actions.

Synchronous and asynchronous actions

You can design your actions to be synchronous (sync) or asynchronous (async). In a sync action, all the blocks complete their functions before the action sends a response. An async action sends a response before its blocks finish running.

For example, if an AI block in your action takes several seconds to complete a task, you may choose to send the response first. Async actions are useful when integrating with webhooks from services that expect a quick response, like Slack.

Here's an example of an async action:

In this action, a Validate block checks the request data against a schema. If the request data is valid, the action simultaneously sends a Status Code 200 response and triggers the Create with AI block. The Create with AI block may complete after the action's timeout setting elapses. By making the action async, it can send a response before completing its workflow.

How actions parse received data

Flows actions parse incoming data as a structured data object. Each field in the object maps to a list of string values. For example, when an action receives the following data:

token=9XqPLt7mKaRjVh2NbzC4f5Yw&team_id=T91H6Z2LK&team_domain=acme&channel_id=C72DF1XRK9&channel_name=integration-testing&user_id=U18ABZQXPR&user_name=jane.doe&command=%2Fflows&text=status&api_app_id=A45K9L72QM&is_enterprise_install=false&enterprise_id=E55YT9QWKV&enterprise_name=AcmeCorp&response_url=https%3A%2F%2Fhooks.slack.com%2Fcommands%2FT91H6Z2LK%2F3399128457101%2FHgT9yW3aKpLvQ8RbFsXe5JdM&trigger_id=3399128462830.8451991626.a1bc

it parses the data like this:

{
  "token": ["9XqPLt7mKaRjVh2NbzC4f5Yw"],
  "team_id": ["T91H6Z2LK"],
  "team_domain": ["acme"],
  "channel_id": ["C72DF1XRK9"],
  "channel_name": ["integration-testing"],
  "user_id": ["U18ABZQXPR"],
  "user_name": ["jane.doe"],
  "command": ["/flows"],
  "text": ["status"],
  "api_app_id": ["A45K9L72QM"],
  "is_enterprise_install": ["false"],
  "enterprise_id": ["E55YT9QWKV"],
  "enterprise_name": ["AcmeCorp"],
  "response_url": ["https://hooks.slack.com/commands/T91H6Z2LK/3399128457101/HgT9yW3aKpLvQ8RbFsXe5JdM"],
  "trigger_id": ["3399128462830.8451991626.a1bcde230ab982f3d451f9bce67d041d"]
}