Flow Builder - Overview

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NOTE:

Select regional availability. This feature is currently available for customers with end users in select countries. To find out if this feature is available in your region, contact a Telesign expert.

This product is available for full-service accounts only.

Flow Builder allows you to build adaptive fraud protection workflows in a no-code manner. Flow Builder lets you design, run, and monitor flows. By leveraging business rules and data from both internal and external sources, Flow Builder enables you to automate decision-making processes efficiently and securely. This page provides an overview, key terms related to Flow Builder, common use cases, and how Flow Builder works.

Use Flow Builder to:

• Reduce fake or high-risk account registrations.
• Strengthen account security without adding unnecessary friction.
• Minimize fraud-related losses.

What problems does Flow Builder solve?

• Standardizes how your team calls external APIs ("Services") and reuses them safely.
• Reduces errors by validating inputs before sending requests.
• Allows non‑developers to understand logic visually and developers to integrate via API.
• Provides reports to see what’s working and where failures happen.

Key terms

Bearer token: A security token that grants access to the person in possession of the token. Whoever whoever "bears" or presents the token is granted access without requiring further proof of identity.

Flow: Step‑by‑step instructions (called nodes) that read input, call services, make decisions, and produce an output. You drag nodes into a canvas, connect them, and define what should happen at each step. A flow is your complete process from start to finish. Also referred to as a "transactional flow."

Node: One step in the process (e.g., call an API, validate a phone, split traffic).

Pre-eKYC: An initial, low-cost identity verification step that screens mobile and IP data during the account sign-up process to flag high-risk users and prevent fraud before a more expensive and time-consuming full eKYC (electronic Know Your Customer) process is conducted.

Service: A reusable HTTP call (with its URL, headers/body, and how to read the response).

Session variable: A temporary key-value pair where the key is the name of the parameter (like phoneType or riskScore), and the value is the data assigned to it, used to reference information throughout a flow to make decisions.

Tool: A node that serves as a dynamic decision-making unit within Flow Builder, which enables the configuration of custom business rules based on the outputs of integrated internal products.

Common use cases

• Account Opening/Pre-eKYC: Validate phone numbers and detect fraudulent signups.
• Authentication: Prevent account takeovers and enable risk-based authentication.
• Password reset/transactions/account takeover: Identify risky phone numbers before processing transactions.
• Lead validation: Ensure that incoming leads are genuine and relevant.

How Flow Builder works

Flow Builder operates through two main steps that enable secure authentication and transactional flow initialization:

1. Authentication: Generate an access token to interact with the FlowBuilder portal securely. This step ensures that only authorized users or systems can initiate and manage transactional flows.
2. Flow initialization: Start a transactional flow by submitting user data or relevant parameters. This step triggers the execution of the defined business rules, integrations with REST APIs, validation tools, or communication channels, ensuring a seamless and automated transactional process.

Documentation by category

Docs

• Get started
• Understand the Protect platform
• Create a flow
• Run, test, and validate a flow
• Authentication

Reference

• Generate access token
• Initialize transactional flow