What determines when or how an action runs in the Flow Designer?

In Flow Designer, the execution of an action is primarily determined by the trigger, which initiates the flow based on specific events or conditions being met. A trigger can be thought of as the starting point of a flow, set up to respond to certain activity like record creation, updates, or specific conditions occurring in ServiceNow. This is why the correct choice highlighting the initiation of actions in Flow Designer focuses on the trigger.

Conditions and actions, while important components of Flow Designer, serve different purposes. Conditions serve to determine whether certain steps within the flow should execute based on data evaluation at runtime; however, it is the trigger that actually dictates when those conditions and subsequent actions are evaluated or executed. Actions are the specific tasks you define to execute within the flow but are contingent upon the flow being initiated by a trigger.

Therefore, the understanding of triggers is crucial for comprehending how and when actions run within the Flow Designer framework.