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Workflow structure: groups, steps and step details
Workflow structure: groups, steps and step details

Learn the component parts, or levels, of Workflows

Carly Hammond avatar
Written by Carly Hammond
Updated over a week ago

Summary

  • There are 3 levels to consider when it comes to Workflow steps: groups, steps, and step details

  • Groups are a way to organise steps, either for visual clarity, or to automatically activate/deactivate steps (via group conditions)

  • Click into each step to view and edit the step details - for example, to set who the owner is and when the step should occur

Who is this article for?

  • All Planhat users - to understand Workflow structure and the main principles of using groups

  • It's especially relevant to Planhat builders, who will be designing the structure of their team's Workflow Templates

Series

This article is part of a series on Workflows:


Article contents

Click below to jump to the relevant section:


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 creating Workflow Templates here.

When you're designing and structuring Workflow steps, there are 3 main levels:

  1. Groups - a way to organise steps (e.g. into categories or goals/milestones)

  2. Steps - individual actions (tasks or emails)

  3. Step details - the details of a selected step, such as the email template to be sent or the plan for a meeting task, plus rules for when the step should occur and who the step owner is, etc.

Let’s see what this looks like in Planhat! The examples below highlight the 3 levels. (Sequence Workflows are shown, but the principles are the same in Project Workflows.)

📌 Reminder:

  • Task steps are available in all Workflows; email steps are available in Sequences (plus Projects targeting End Users)

  • Projects show steps in a table; Sequences are designed for email steps and the streamlined UI highlights timings

You can click on the images below to expand them.

Task step highlighted

Email step highlighted

Great! Now let's dive a little deeper.


Groups

Groups are a way of organising steps.

Why use groups?

The main advantages of groups are:

  • Visual clarity - divide up steps so you can more easily see what category of action is happening, who's responsible, and where you are in the process

  • To use group conditions to automatically activate (and potentially deactivate) steps in bulk - this is a fantastic way that Workflows can efficiently provide a tailored service to your customers, by responding to changes in data

Group quick facts

  • You can have as many groups as you like, each containing your choice of steps

  • You choose the name and colour of each group

  • If you share steps in Portals, the name of the relevant group will show there too

  • You can optionally set a rule-based condition on each group, determining when that group (and therefore steps within it) are activated. You also set what happens if/when the condition no longer applies - keep or expire any remaining steps

    • For example, activate the first group of emails when a Decision Maker logs in but hasn't yet carried out a specific action, and cancel them as soon as the action is carried out

  • You can't set timings on groups (e.g. set a group to start 5 days after the Workflow) - set timings on individual steps instead

  • Groups don't have to run in the order they are displayed, and multiple groups within a Workflow can run at the same time

    • You can't directly refer to groups in rule-based conditions - e.g. start group 2 when group 1 is completed - although you can achieve this indirectly by setting conditions based on changes in usage data

📚 Related articles:

  • To learn how to create groups as part of building a Workflow Template, see this article

  • To learn all about group conditions - why and how to activate/deactivate groups of steps - please refer to this article

When to use groups

There are many scenarios where groups are incredibly useful to organise and/or control steps. To give you some inspiration, here are some typical use cases for groups of steps:

  • Types of actions / groups of people

    • E.g. in an Onboarding Project, groups could be:

      • Sales handover (internal - Sales to CS)

      • Main setup steps (for your CSM and your customer's Main User)

      • Tech setup steps (for your TAM and your customer's Tech/Ops contact)

  • Internal v. external steps

    • E.g. in an Onboarding Project, groups could be:

      • Internal actions (e.g. setting up the customer's copy of your software)

      • Actions with the customer (e.g. meetings)

      • Actions for the customer to carry out (e.g. configuration for them to do)

  • Objectives/milestones/goals - typically in a pathway/funnel

    • E.g. in a Sequence designed to onboard new End Users to a training platform, groups could be:

      • Not yet logged in

      • Logged in but not yet started a course

      • Started a course but not yet finished a course

      • Finished a course but not yet shared a certificate

    • These groups would be used in combination with group conditions to activate and deactivate the groups in order, as an End User progresses along the series of actions

  • Types of customers

    • E.g. in a Project targeting Companies, a group could be:

      • Enterprise

    • E.g. in a Sequence targeting End Users, a group could be:

      • Main User

    • These groups would be used in combination with group conditions

    • In both examples above, the groups could contain extra training for these "special" customers

    • Alternatively, if there are lots of differences between customer types, you could make them as completely separate Workflows, or if there are minimal differences, you could use step conditions rather than groups

  • Products/features/modules

    • E.g. in either a Project or a Sequence, if your product is HR software, groups could be:

      • Holidays/Vacations Module

      • Payroll Module

      • Careers Module

    • Each group would be activated by a group condition, so the relevant steps (e.g. training sessions or instructional emails) would be applied to each customer

  • Countries/regions/languages

    • E.g. in a Sequence where you want to send emails in an End User's preferred language, groups could be:

      • English

      • French

      • German

      • Spanish

    • E.g. in a Project where there are steps related to regulations in different countries, groups could be:

      • EU

      • US and Canada

    • Again, the relevant groups would be activated by group conditions


Steps and step details

Steps are the actions - tasks or emails - that occur in the Workflow, and which you can organise in groups.

Company-level Projects contain only task steps, whereas Sequences and End User Projects can include both task and email steps (although Projects are typically composed of task steps, and Sequences are mainly email steps).

Task steps are actions for someone to manually carry out. There are many different types of tasks, and they could be either internal (carried out within your organisation) or external (involving customers) - you can even share some tasks in Portals for your customers to complete. You may have a task to send an email using a particular email template, but in a task step the email is not sent automatically.

Email steps can automatically send emails for you, or automatically create emails for you to manually approve. You can use merge tags in email templates, as well as conditions on steps/groups (and the Workflow itself), to ensure that the automated emails are customised for each recipient.

To view the details of any step in a Sequence or Project, click on it (not the name), or hover over it to see the "Open step details" button to press.

Let's take a look at step details for these two step types.

Task step details

Here are a couple of examples of what task steps may look like:

Example 1

Example 2

Task step components

  • Conversation Types (coloured icon in the top left)

    • You can optionally select a Conversation Type for each step

    • You'll see these elsewhere in Planhat associated with tasks - see this article for a general overview of Conversation Types

    • They make it easier to identify particular categories of actions in a Workflow or when you view actions in Company and End User Profiles

    • They can be saved as time-series data; Conversation Types give you a way to analyse how time is spent by your team

    • Conversation Types can act as templates, so selecting one for a step can automatically bring in your notes on associated meeting structure, for instance, which you can then customise for the step

  • Labels (tag symbol in top left)

    • You can optionally apply labels (tags) to steps

    • Like Conversation Types, you'll see task labels used elsewhere in Planhat too

    • They are a simple way to categorise steps, and draw attention to them when live - e.g. you could have an "Important" tag

  • Task Owner (initial in top right)

    • Here you select who should own the step and be responsible for the task being completed

    • This can be a dynamic reference, such as "Account Owner" or "Technical Account Manager" (in which case, the actual person will be filled in when the Workflow Template is applied), or a specific named person (e.g. the Enablement Manager if it's a Sequence promoting a new training course)

  • Wait for

    • This is used for determining when the task should occur (its due date)

    • Use the dropdown to swap between "Days" and "Workdays"

    • To learn more about how to schedule when steps occur, see this article

  • Email Template

    • It's quite common for a task to be associated with an email - for example, you may have a task to email multiple people at a Company to set up a QBR, or after running a training session you might have a task to send a follow-up email

    • In this dropdown menu you can select an email template, as you can see in the Example 2 screenshot above

    • However, remember that in task steps, emails are not automatically sent to End Users - this is only possible in email steps

  • Show in Customer Portal

    • If you toggle this on, this step will be visible in the Portal, if you then add the Workflow to a customer's Portal. (The relevant group name will also be visible)

  • Description

    • A rich text area where you can add further detail to the task, including bullet points, images, links, and so on. Make it clear what the person completing the task should do

    • If you share the task to a customer Portal, this will be visible to your customer, so make sure the instructions are aimed at them - you can see this in the Example 1 screenshot above

  • Checklists

    • You can add checklist items for the task completer to tick (check) off within the task. For example, if the task is to hold a kick-off call, you might have subtasks to book the QBR, do different things to prepare, run it, and then send a follow-up email

    • Using checklists is a great way to simplify Workflows and therefore your team's task, as you don't need every single subtask to be listed as a separate individual task

  • Attachments

    • Here you can add files, images and videos to add extra context to the task

    • For example, you can embed a video into the step by clicking on the "+" button and then "Add a URL" (shown in GIF below), for the following use cases:

      • User training - add a video for your customers to view (e.g. a welcome video or an instructional video)

        • Turn on the "Show in Customer Portal" toggle in the step details, and share the Workflow to their Portal

        • To include the attached video in the shared step in the Portal, you also need to modify the video in the Workflow itself (i.e. when it's applied to a specific Company) by clicking the three vertical dots on the top right of the video and clicking "Show in Customer Portal" - screenshot below (under the GIF). You need to do this per Company; it's not possible to apply this setting to the Workflow Template. The reason the video is not included in the shared step by default is that the video may contain internal instructions (i.e. for your colleagues rather than your customers)

      • Internal training - add a video to explain to your colleagues what they should do to complete the task

On an individual Workflow itself (belonging to a specific Company):

Email step details

Let's go through email step details. Remember that email steps are for sending emails automatically, so they have different step details to tasks.

Here's what an email step may look like:

Email step components

  • Send When

    • This can either be "As soon as possible" (i.e. send as soon as the step is activated, which may be when the Workflow is applied, or when another condition is met), "After manual approval", or "Custom"

    • If you select "Custom", you can choose the number of calendar days (or workdays) between when the step is activated and when the email is sent. You can learn more about step timings in this article

  • Email Template

    • You can select an email template from your library (see here for more on how to create them) and edit it here

    • Alternatively, you could create an email from scratch here

    • You can use merge tags in your email to automatically customise your email for each End User

  • From

    • Set who the email should be sent from. Like you've just seen for task owner, this could be a dynamic reference, such as "Account Owner" if you'd like the email to be sent from the relevant CSM (so this will be assigned when the Workflow Template is applied), or a specific named person every time, such as your organisation's Training Manager if it's about training

  • Time and Time Zone

    • This can be helpful if you will be sending emails to specific countries or regions

  • Subject

    • You specify the email subject here. Note that this can be different to the name/title of the email step in the step list

    • This can be populated automatically when you select an email template, but you could still edit it here in that case

  • Cc

    • Here you can copy in Team Members (Planhat Users)

    • This is a dynamic reference in the Workflow Template that will be populated with the correct email address in the actual Workflow

    • You could use a default Team Member field such as "Account Owner", or a custom Team Member field such as "Technical Account Manager"

    • This means you can, for example, automatically cc the customer's CSM when an automated renewal email is sent from Finance

  • To End Users matching filter

    • You'll see this in email steps in Sequences targeting the Company model

    • This is how you specify which End User(s) the email is sent to: choose an existing End User filter here

    • End Users will automatically be filtered by the Workflow's Company - e.g. if you have a Company Sequence and it is applied to Microsoft, the email will only be sent to End Users in your chosen filter who belong to Microsoft in Planhat

    • A single email will be sent to all recipients in Company Sequences

  • Cc End Users matching filter

    • You'll see this in email steps in Sequences targeting the Company model

    • Similar to "To End Users matching filter" we just described above, here you can select a different End User filter to specify which End User(s) from the Company you would like to be copied into the email (if any)


Further reading

If you would like to learn more about ...

  • ... building Workflow Templates, see this article

  • ... scheduling Workflows (conditions etc.), see here

  • ... viewing and using Workflows, see here

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