First Workflow Walkthrough

A screenshot walkthrough of the happy path for first-time Self-Hosted Beta users — from PAT sign-in to saving your first local workflow draft.

Beta notice: ActionsManager Self-Hosted is currently a free beta preview. The beta is provided as-is, without warranty or production-readiness guarantee.

Overview

This walkthrough covers the end-to-end happy path for a first-time self-hosted beta user:

Open the login screen
Enter your Personal Access Token and sign in
Meet the welcome screen and choose whether to take the guided tour
View the empty Projects page
Create a new project — Project Basics
Create a new project — Select Repositories
Create a new project — Review and confirm
View the updated dashboard with your new project
Open the project workspace
Add your first workflow from the workspace
Choose the workflow type
Configure Regular Workflow options
Review and edit workflow YAML in the editor
Confirm the save-draft prompt
View the saved draft state

Important: Saving a draft does not push any changes to GitHub. A saved draft exists only in ActionsManager until you create pull requests. PR-based delivery is the recommended path during beta testing.

Open http://localhost:8080 after starting the container. The login screen offers two authentication methods: Log in with GitHub (OAuth) and Sign in with Personal Access Token.

For the fastest self-hosted beta path, choose Sign in with Personal Access Token and paste a fine-grained or classic GitHub PAT into the token field.

Paste your PAT into the token field. The field will show the token ready for submission.

Click Sign In to authenticate.

Step 3 — Welcome Screen and the Guided Tour

The first time you sign in, ActionsManager introduces itself before you reach the dashboard. The welcome screen explains what the product does in three points: projects group repositories, changes are delivered as pull requests, and drift detection tells you when a repository has diverged from the workflow you expect.

First-login welcome screen introducing ActionsManager, with Not now and Show me around buttons

You have two choices:

Not now — dismisses the welcome screen and takes you straight to the dashboard. It will not appear again.
Show me around — starts a guided tour that walks you through this entire walkthrough inside the product.

Either way you can carry on with the steps below. The rest of this page documents the flow without the tour running.

What the guided tour does

The tour highlights the control you need next and explains the choice in front of you, one step at a time. It waits for you to actually perform each action — it never clicks anything on your behalf, because from the pull request step onward those are real changes to your repositories.

Guided tour highlighting the New Project button with an explanation beside it

While the tour runs it also fills in the Create Project form for you — a demo project name, a colour, and Prefix Mode — so you can read each explanation rather than inventing values. You can change any of them.

The tour is not modal: the rest of the app stays usable while it is on screen. Press Skip tour, or the Escape key, to end it at any point without losing work.

You can start it again later from Restart tour in the user menu (top right).

Note: the welcome screen and tour are only offered to members who can create projects. If your workspace administrator has given you read-only access, you will go straight to the dashboard.

Step 4 — The Projects Page

After signing in you land on the Projects page, the first of the three tabs in the app header beside Managed Files and Managed Actions. Your plan appears as a chip beside your avatar in the app header, on every page, with an Upgrade link when your plan has one. Your project usage shows beside New Project (for example, 0 of 4 Caller Workflow Projects and 0 of 2 Reusable Workflow Projects in the Self-Hosted Beta). The project list is empty until you create your first project, and a dashed New project box shows how many projects your plan still has room for.

The Projects page with the Projects tab selected in the app header, the Self-Hosted Beta plan chip beside the avatar, an empty project list, the project usage beside the New Project button, and a dashed New project box reading “6 of 6 remaining”

Click New Project, or the dashed New project box, to begin.

Step 5 — Create Project: Project Basics

The Create Project wizard opens on the Project Basics step. Enter a project name, choose the project type, and pick an identity color.

Create Project — Project Basics showing project name field, Caller Workflow Project vs Reusable Workflow Project selection, and color picker

Option	Description
Caller Workflow Project	Manages repositories whose workflows call reusable workflows. This is the most common starting point.
Reusable Workflow Project	Manages a shared workflow producer repository.

Choose Caller Workflow Project for a typical first project and click Continue.

Step 6 — Create Project: Select Repositories

Select whether the project covers public or private repositories, then pick one or more repositories from the list. A summary of selected repositories is shown before you continue.

Create Project — Repository Visibility and Selection showing public/private toggle, repository selection list, and selected repository summary

Click Continue when all target repositories are selected.

Trying it on a throwaway repository

If you would rather not point your first project at a repository you care about — the walkthrough ends with a real pull request — use Create a demo repository. It creates a repository named actionsmanager-demo under your account and selects it for you.

Repository step with the Create a demo repository option above the repository list

This option appears while the guided tour is running.

Step 7 — Create Project: Review and Confirm

Review the project summary before creation. This step also shows the Prefix Mode option.

Create Project — Resource Naming and Review showing Prefix Mode vs No Prefix Mode toggle and final project summary

Confirm the project name, type, repositories, and prefix setting, then click Create Project.

Step 8 — Projects Dashboard After Creation

After creating the project, you are returned to the Projects page. Your new project now appears as a card in the project list, with its identity color, its project type under the name, its status beside the menu, and a row showing its workflows, repository visibility and naming mode. The dashed New project box follows the last card.

The Projects page showing the newly created project as a card with its identity color, project type, status, workflow count, repository visibility and naming mode, followed by a dashed New project box

Click the project card to open the project workspace.

Step 9 — Project Workspace: Overview

The project workspace opens with an empty workflow state, under the same app header as every other page, with Projects marked as the current section. The left sidebar shows the project and its repositories.

Project workspace under the app header, showing the project sidebar and the empty workflow state

Step 10 — Project Workspace: Add Your First Workflow

The main area shows three action buttons: Import Existing, Create Pull Requests, and Add Workflow.

Project workspace showing the Import Existing, Create Pull Requests, and Add Workflow action buttons

Click Add Workflow to create your first workflow.

Step 11 — Add Project File: Choose What to Add

The Add Project File dialog asks what to add:

Add Project File dialog offering Workflow, Reusable Workflow, Link Reusable Workflow and Custom File

Option	Description
Workflow	A standard GitHub Actions workflow file for one or more repositories in the project.
Reusable Workflow	A workflow defined once and called from other workflows. Available once reusable workflows are enabled for the project.
Link Reusable Workflow	Links this project’s caller workflows to an existing reusable workflow in another project.
Custom File	Any other file the project delivers to its repositories. CODEOWNERS is managed in Managed Files instead.

Choose Workflow for a first workflow.

Step 12 — Workflow Options

Enter a workflow name and choose how to create the initial YAML content:

Workflow Options modal showing workflow name entry and options: Open Blank Workflow, Detect Build Types, and Generate Templates

Option	Description
Open Blank Workflow	Starts with an empty YAML editor.
Detect Build Types	Inspects the selected repositories and recommends matching workflow templates based on detected build tooling (Maven, npm, .NET, Python, Go, Rust, Docker, etc.).
Generate Templates	Presents a library of curated workflow templates.

Enter a workflow name, choose an option, and click Create.

Step 13 — Workflow Editor

The workflow editor opens with the new workflow file. The header shows the generated filename (with prefix if Prefix Mode is enabled), the selected repository, and the current save state (Unsaved).

Workflow editor showing the generated prefix workflow filename, selected repository, YAML editor, Unsaved state indicator, and Commit Locally button

Review and edit the YAML as needed. When the workflow is ready to save locally, click Commit Locally.

Step 14 — Saved Draft State

After clicking Commit Locally, the workflow is saved immediately. The editor shows the New Local status badge and a toast notification confirms the workflow was saved as a draft.

Workflow editor showing the New Local status badge and a toast notification confirming the workflow was saved as a local draft

The workflow now exists as a local draft in ActionsManager. No changes have been made to any repository yet.

What Happens Next

Action	Effect
Create Pull Requests	Proposes the draft workflow to GitHub repositories as reviewable pull requests.
Continue editing	Update the YAML and save additional drafts before creating pull requests.

Return to the project workspace and click Create Pull Requests when you are ready to send the workflow to GitHub.

Important Notes

Saving a draft is not the same as pushing to GitHub

A Save draft / Commit Locally action stores the workflow in ActionsManager only. The workflow file does not appear in any repository until you create pull requests for it, a separate step after drafting.

Every change goes out as a pull request

ActionsManager delivers workflows to your repositories only through pull requests, so you can review each change before it merges.

Recommended PAT permissions

When creating a fine-grained PAT for ActionsManager, grant these permissions to cover all features used in this walkthrough:

Permission	Minimum Level	Required for
Metadata	Read-only	All operations
Contents	Read and write	Workflow file management
Actions	Read and write	Workflow triggering
Pull requests	Read and write	PR-based delivery
Secrets	Read and write	Repository secrets management (optional)
Variables	Read and write	Repository variables management (optional)

Secrets and Variables permissions are only needed if you use those features. For a basic first-workflow walkthrough, Metadata, Contents, Actions, and Pull requests are sufficient.

See GitHub PAT Setup for full token creation instructions.

Quick Start — start the container and sign in
GitHub PAT Setup — create and configure a PAT
Projects — understand the project model
Workflows — workflow management features
PR Campaigns — deliver changes through pull requests
Drift Detection — keep repositories in sync