Automate digital downloads with Shopify Flow

What you can do with Flow + Alva

Three workflows merchants build first:

• Refund → revoke access. Shopify's Order refunded trigger feeds Alva's Revoke access action so refunded customers stop being able to redownload.
• Fraud rejected → Slack alert. Alva's Fraud check failed trigger fires a Slack message to your support channel with the order number and reason.
• VIP customer → auto-approve. When a customer with a VIP tag places an order, Alva's Approve flagged order action skips the fraud queue and releases the download immediately.

Triggers Alva fires

Alva sends Flow events through Shopify's flowTriggerReceive API. Each trigger ships as a separate extension.

• Digital purchase delivered — fires after Alva sends the download email for a paid order. Payload: customer ID, order ID, total files, product names.
• Digital file downloaded — fires every time a customer downloads a file. Payload: customer ID, order ID, product ID, file name, downloads used.
• Fraud check failed — fires when Shopify's risk score puts an order into Alva's fraud queue. Payload: customer ID, order ID, fraud reason.
• Fraud check approved — fires when an order clears review (manual or automatic). Payload: customer ID, order ID.
• Download limit reached — fires when a customer is blocked because they hit the per-order download cap. Payload: customer ID, order ID, downloads used, max allowed.

Actions Alva exposes

Each action targets a single order or product. Most accept the order ID supplied by the upstream trigger.

• Grant downloads — release files for an order that didn't auto-deliver (manual orders, draft orders).
• Revoke access — invalidate every download link tied to an order.
• Resend download email — re-fire the delivery email to the order's customer email.
• Approve flagged order — clear an order from the fraud queue, assign license keys, send the email.
• Reject flagged order — mark a queued order as fraud and block delivery.
• Send flagged-order alerts to Slack — post fraud-queue entries to a Slack webhook URL.

Together with the five triggers above and three lifecycle/link extensions (order digital link, product digital files link, lifecycle callback), the count totals 14.

Setting up your first Flow

1. Open Shopify Flow. In your Shopify admin, open the Flow app from Apps. Click Create workflow.
2. Pick a trigger. Click the trigger node, search for Alva, and choose one — for example Digital purchase delivered.
3. Add an Alva action. Click the + below the trigger, search for Alva again, and pick an action like Resend download email. Map the order ID from the trigger output.
4. Activate. Click Turn on workflow. Place a test order to confirm the trigger fires and the action runs.

Example: refund → revoke access automatically

1. Trigger. In Flow, pick Shopify's built-in Order refunded trigger. (Alva accepts the standard Shopify order ID.)
2. Action. Add Alva's Revoke access action. Map Order ID to the trigger's order.id output.
3. Optional condition. Add a Flow Condition node before the action — for example, only revoke when the refund is full, not partial.
4. Activate and test. Turn on the workflow. Issue a test refund. Alva invalidates every download link on the order within seconds, and the next click serves a 404.