Airplane tasks
Tasks are the basic building block of Airplane.
Overview
Airplane's core value is to make it easy to turn engineering-only operations (previously SQL
queries, scripts, etc.) into internal apps that anyone can use safely. In Airplane, these apps are
called tasks.
Tasks are the basic building blocks of Airplane. A task is a lightweight app that represents a
single business operation that you want people at your company to be able to execute.
Examples
Here are some sample operations you can convert into apps using tasks:
- Look up a user's profile based on their email or name
- Deactivate a user's account
- Issue a refund for the user's latest payment
- GDPR requests
- Cancel a pending wire transfer
- Look up a user's order history
- Re-send the user's latest order
- Add a $10 credit to a user's account
Airplane tasks are simple: they take in zero or more input parameters, execute some logic (e.g. run
a SQL query, run a Python script), and then display output to the end-user.
Tasks are mini applications for your scripts and queries.
Tasks are simple but powerful. SQL queries, REST endpoints, JS or Python code—these can be turned
into tasks with minimal engineering work. You can specify input validation rules, group-based
permissions, approval flows, and see an audit history of task runs to ensure that crucial business
operations are conducted safely.
Tasks can be run through the Airplane UI, on a cron-like schedule, invoked via a Slack bot, and
more.