Some steps in Pipelines take longer to complete—like copying thousands of records, generating a CSV, or waiting for an AI response. These are called Background steps (formerly Async steps).
When your pipeline reaches a background step:
Pipelines starts the work and runs it in the background
The pipeline pauses while the work completes
Once finished, the pipeline automatically resumes
From your pipeline's perspective, this is still a single step.
What to expect
Background steps behave differently from other steps:
They can take time—from seconds to hours
They run in the background—you can leave and come back later
They resume automatically—no manual intervention required
They may retry automatically if something interrupts the process
Activity log behavior
Background steps appear in the Activity log while they run, but are displayed with slight delay:
You may see the step making progress
After the step has completed all logs and details are available
Step count and billing
Background steps count as one step run. Even if a step takes a long time or retries multiple times, it is still counted as a single step. This ensures you're only counted for the work you started, not the internal processing needed to complete it.
List of background steps
Step | Channel | Why it's a background step |
|---|---|---|
Copy Records | Quickbase | Can copy thousands of records which may take time |
Export CSV | Quickbase, Snowflake | Streaming large exports takes time |
Import CSV | Quickbase, Snowflake | Bulk imports take time |
Download CSV | Bucket | Generating a file takes time |
Pause | Clock | Deliberately waits for a set amount of time |
Custom Action | AI Actions | Waits on an AI model to respond |