The storyboard at a glance
Before working through the fundamentals, here's a visual overview of the four key sections of the storyboard:
Story toolbar — Drag actions, tools, and templates from here onto the storyboard
Storyboard — Your central workspace for building and connecting actions
Properties panel — Configure each action using the right-hand panel
Event viewer — Inspect real-time event data output from your actions
Actions
Testing an action
To test an action in Tines, select the action and click "Test".
This will display the results of the test along with a status code of the action
Copying an action
To copy an action in Tines, click on the action you wish to copy and then either click the copy button or Ctrl/Command ⌘ + C on your keyboard.
Once copied, you can paste the action into your storyboard.
Copying multiple actions
To copy multiple actions, press and hold Ctrl/Command ⌘ and use your mouse to select the actions you want to copy.
Then, the same as copying single actions, click the copy button or Ctrl/Command ⌘ + C on your keyboard.
Once copied, you can paste the action into your storyboard.
Align and tidy actions
When building a story in Tines, things can get messy. Actions overlap, or get crowded, and the overall flow can become harder to follow.
Tines gives you two simple tools to quickly bring order back to your board:
Align: This arranges the selected actions so that they line up neatly, either vertically or horizontally. It’s useful when you want multiple actions to share the same axis.
Tidy: This automatically spaces out the selected actions evenly, reducing overlaps and improving readability. It’s helpful for cleaning up a messy storyboard quickly without manually dragging actions around.
With these options, you can straighten out actions, space them evenly, and make your storyboard that bit easier to read and manage.
Tip:
Use Align when precision is needed (e.g., keeping several actions perfectly level).
Use Tidy when you want the overall layout to be more organised and visually clearer.
Delete a connection between actions
To delete a connection, click the line between two actions and press delete.
To undo your delete, press CTRL or CMD Z.
Add a note
Notes are helpful for adding information to your story.
To add a note, drag and drop the note action on to your storyboard.
Tip: You can also click into a blank space on your storyboard and type 'n' to instantly add a note.
Formatting your notes with toggle headings
You can add toggle headings (H1, H2, and H3) to your notes to collapse and expand sections, keeping your notes organized without the clutter. Type / in any note to open the formatting menu and select a toggle heading.
Referencing upstream data
If you want reference data from an upstream action in a downstream action, Rosie from the product team explains it in the video below:
Steps for referencing upstream data:
Make sure the actions are connected together in the story. They don't need to be connected directly together, but connected via other actions.
To reference upstream data, you need to create a pill in the downstream action. There are three ways to create pills:
Hovering over the event data key and clicking the copy symbol, then pasting it into the payload
Double-clicking the event data key to copy the path, then pasting it into the payload
Select the payload with your cursor and a + will appear. Click +, select value, and manually parse the JSON path to the relevant event key
If you need to reference multiple data points from upstream as different keys, click the + sign in the payload to add more pills. You can reference a number, boolean, text, and formulas, amongst other data types.
Pills are meant for dynamic references, linking actions together for a smooth workflow. If you want to input data directly without referencing anything upstream, you don't need to use pills. You can type numbers, boolean values, or text directly into Tines, which will be automatically referenced.