Summary
In a Workflow Template, you configure when each step (task or email) will happen - and indeed, whether it will happen at all, depending on the circumstances
The main ways you can schedule Workflows are listed below, and you can use more than one in combination too
Step timings
Step dependencies
Conditions
Workflow entry and exit criteria
Group conditions
Step conditions
Who is this article for?
Any Planhat users who would like a quick overview of how you set when Workflow steps occur
Series
This article is part of a series on scheduling Workflows:
Scheduling your Workflows ⬅️ You are here
It is strongly recommended to read these in order, as they build in complexity, and later articles refer back to earlier ones.
Introduction
📌 Important to note:
This article assumes you are familiar with the basic concepts of Workflows (Projects and Sequences). If you haven't yet read our overview article, start there first before reading this article. You can also learn more about Workflow structure here, and creating Workflow Templates here.
A Workflow is a series of actions (tasks and/or email steps), and you can configure each Workflow Template to automatically activate specific steps, at different times, in response to different criteria. You can control this in a variety of ways, ranging from simple time-based scheduling to sophisticated rule-based conditions. You can also combine these various scheduling methods together, to enable a great deal of customisation and flexibility.
The ability to automatically control a step, group of steps or even a whole Workflow enables you to respond quickly to changes in data. This flexibility enables you to provide your customers with a tailored service through an automated/tech-touch process.
Summary of methods
You can schedule steps using the following methods (which can be used together):
Step timings, e.g. step 2 should happen 5 days after the Workflow Template is applied
Step dependencies, e.g. step 2 should happen 5 days after step 1 is completed
Conditions, which can be applied on 3 levels:
Entry and exit criteria - automatically apply and/or archive a whole Workflow in response to data, e.g. apply a Project to all new Companies, or archive a Sequence once the End User has logged in
Group conditions - automatically activate and deactivate a group of steps in response to data, e.g. activate a group of emails for End Users who have logged in but not completed a course, and deactivate the group once an End User has completed a course
Step conditions - automatically activate a step in response to data, e.g. only after a specific call (task step) is completed, activate a step to send a follow-up email; or, if the call doesn't take place within 7 days of its due date, activate an escalation task
In this article series, we'll deep-dive into each of these methods in turn, explaining what they are, why you would use them (use cases and advantages), and how to set them up in your Workflow Templates.
Next ...
This article series has been designed for you to read the articles in order (although it is possible to jump ahead).
Firstly, let's take a look at the simplest and most widely used method of scheduling: step timings.