Cloning a workflow means creating a copy of a workflow version — in the same account (for example, to iterate on a policy safely) or in a different account or cell (for example, to promote a policy from a sandbox account to production, or reuse a proven policy across accounts).
You can clone workflows yourself using the workflow editor’s copy/paste capability. You no longer need to contact Alloy Support to have a workflow cloned on your behalf.
Broader Portability: Users can now reliably copy/paste logic between workflows not only within the same account, but also across accounts and cells. You can copy and paste individual nodes or entire workflows.
New Workflow Version Saving Model: New tags or outcomes are not added to the account until you explicitly save the workflow version. Previously, these objects would be created immediately. This reduces the number of extra objects created during workflow editing.
Smarter Merge: The Alloy system merges incoming logic from copy/paste with existing logic rather than overwriting:
Thresholds are merged with “or” statements
Existing objects with the same names and settings are merged
Objects with the same name but different settings or logic are duplicated with a (1) appended to the name
The system flags modified and added objects on paste, which allows you to confirm or undo changes before saving them
Copy and Paste How-to
Open the workflow version you want to clone in the workflow editor.
Copy it: use the keyboard shortcut CTRL+C / CMD+C, or select Copy Workflow from the ellipsis menu.
Navigate to the destination workflow and click into it. The destination can be in the same account, a different account, or a different cell. [PLACEHOLDER: confirm the recommended way to create a blank destination workflow when cloning into a brand-new workflow rather than pasting into an existing one.]
Paste: use CTRL+V / CMD+V, or select Paste from Clipboard from the ellipsis menu.
Review the objects the editor flags as added or modified, and confirm or undo changes.
Save the workflow version.
You can also copy a single node and its antecedent nodes by selecting Copy from the node’s ellipsis menu.
Merge Logic Example
If your workflow contains a tag Low Risk and the incoming snippet also has a tag with the same name and settings, we will merge the tags so that your logic remains centralized.
The thresholds are merged by adding an or operator between them. For example if Workflow: Low Risk had a threshold of input1 > 10 and Snippet: Low Risk had a threshold of input2 = 'hello' then your tag Low Risk will have the thresholds input1 > 10 || input2 = 'hello.'
There are cases where we can’t merge things with the same name (for example if you have a published attribute (PA) of the same name in your workflow and in the snippet, but they have different data types). In those cases we add a new PA and append (1) to the name, so that you can rename it before saving (My PA will become My PA (1)).
To summarize, when you paste, Alloy merges the incoming logic with the destination workflow’s existing logic rather than overwriting it:
Thresholds are merged with “or” statements.
Existing objects with the same names and settings are merged.
Objects with the same name but different settings or logic are duplicated with a “(1)” appended to the name so you can rename them before saving.
New tags or outcomes are not added to the account until you explicitly save the workflow version.
How non-global attributes are handled
Workflows often reference attributes that are not global — for example, custom attributes owned by your organization. Previously, cloning a workflow containing non-global or customer-owned attributes into another account failed until those attributes were removed from the workflow or manually enabled in the target account.
When you clone or copy/paste a workflow containing non-global or customer-owned attributes into another account or cell, any attributes missing in the target account are automatically enabled or recreated for that account as part of the paste. You no longer need to strip attributes from the workflow or ask for them to be enabled before cloning.
Things to note
Review the flagged added/modified objects carefully before saving, especially when pasting into an account with existing tags, outcomes, or published attributes of the same names.
Cloning a workflow does not carry over account-level configuration such as service credentials; services in the destination account must be enabled and configured in that account’s Service Settings.