Workflows: Streamline work processes with Workflows in PeopleForce

Imagine that you have a date for a new employee to start work, and you need to do a variety of tasks before they begin: Collect documents, prepare a workplace, order equipment to make the adaptation of a newcomer simple and clear, etc.

Onboarding is a repeatable process because every time you have a new employee you need to go through the same steps. But what if such a process could be created for other recurring events in the company, to have an algorithm of action in advance? Preparing for birthdays, and anniversaries, updating documents, certificates, insurance, etc, can be quite stressful. A workflow is a list of tasks that need to be completed before a deadline to ensure the event goes smoothly.

Events that create the necessity for a workflow are called triggers.

When setting up a workflow, you now have four options:

Let's create a new trigger event, for example, Work Anniversary. To do this, go to Workflows - New workflow.

1. Name the event.

2. Create a description for the event.

3. Choose whether this event is date-related.

In our case, the "Anniversary" event depends on the date. To set this up, navigate to the "New Trigger" tab, and select the "Date related employee attribute."

Next, decide the preparation window before the event – for instance, let's set it to 7 days in advance. From the attributes drop-down menu, locate "Anniversary of employee." These attributes offer great flexibility, including options like:

- First day of employment

- Last day of employment

- End of probation period

- Birthday of employee

- Anniversary of employee

Additionally, you can choose "Custom date field of employee" and then pick the necessary field from the custom fields' drop-down list. This is useful if the event is linked to a specific date or field in the employee's profile, such as a family member's birthday.

Let's move on to selecting the persons who will be affected by the trigger event. For example, we want to celebrate the anniversaries of only full-time employees. You need to select this condition in the ''Workflow applies to'' section.

In this case, the workflow will apply exclusively to full-time employees. For example, we want to further narrow down the circle of people whose work anniversary we want to celebrate. Let's add another condition for the choice of location: All full-time employees who work only in a certain city.

What if we want to clarify that these should be employees who were hired before the beginning of the year? Let's add the following clarification.

Now our work anniversary workflow will be triggered automatically 7 days before the anniversary date for 9 people who work full-time in Kyiv and Odesa and were hired before 1.01.2022. Please note that the system automatically counts the number of employees that meet the selected conditions.

Thus, you can specify who will be covered by your workflow. If your team has processes that are set up for certain projects, managers, selective employees from different departments of different locations, etc., the system will help you single them out to help you plan an algorithm of actions for a certain date.

You can add collaborators to a workflow to let specific employees view and edit that workflow without giving them full workflow management access across the company.

To add collaborators, open Workflows, create a new workflow or edit an existing one, and use the Collaborators field in the workflow settings. Select the employees who should be able to work with this workflow.

Collaborators can:

Collaborators cannot:

This setup is useful when several people need to work on the same workflow, but should not receive full access to all workflows in the company.

After creating the trigger event, we proceed to fill it with tasks for execution.

To do this, click + on the trigger field and select what you want to add. Here are the options:

Tasks can also contain subtasks, each of which can have different performers. This is how the workflow task tree is formed.

You can set separate conditions for individual workflow actions. This allows one workflow to apply to a broader group of employees, while specific actions inside that workflow apply only to employees who match additional criteria.

This is useful when the workflow structure is mostly the same, but some actions need to differ depending on employee data. For example, you can use a single offboarding workflow for the whole company, but configure one task for employees in Paris and another for employees in Munich.

To set conditions for a workflow action:

For example, you can use one offboarding workflow for multiple locations, but create different actions inside it:

This helps you avoid creating multiple similar workflows and makes it easier to manage one workflow across different offices, teams, or companies.

PeopleForce provides two ways to review workflow execution history, depending on whether you want to see activity across all workflows or only within one specific workflow.

To review execution history across all workflows, open Workflows and click Workflow history in the top-right corner of the page.

This opens the general workflow history page, where you can review runs from all workflows in one list. Use the Add filter to narrow the results and check details such as date, workflow name, person, progress and status. This view is useful when you want to monitor overall workflow activity across the company.

Delve into the workflow details to precisely identify which actions have been successfully executed.

To review the execution history for a single workflow, open the workflow and click Workflow history in the top-right corner.

The history opens in a sidebar on the right side of the workflow page. It shows runs only for the selected workflow, so you can quickly review its activity without leaving the page. In this view, you can see date, person, progress, and status. Use the search field at the top of the sidebar to quickly find runs by person.

The employee who receives tasks from the workflow sees them on their Me dashboard, in the Tasks tab or in the To-Do's section. If, for example, you want to leave a comment about the task you have been assigned, you can do it in the Activity tab. Click on the task in Task and leave a note in the comments section.

You can now organize and manage workflows more efficiently using tags. Tags help categorize workflows by purpose, process, or department, for example, Onboarding, Recruitment, or Finance.

When creating or editing a workflow, you can assign one or more tags in the workflow settings. Tags make it easier to group, search, and manage related workflows.

In the main Workflows list, you can filter workflows by Tag or Owner to quickly find specific items.

A toggle button allows you to activate or deactivate workflows directly from the list view. Deactivated workflows remain saved but will not trigger automatically until reactivated.

PeopleForce provides two ways to review workflow execution history, depending on whether you want to see activity across all workflows or only within one specific workflow.

To review execution history across all workflows, open Workflows and click Workflow history in the top-right corner of the page.

This opens the general workflow history page, where you can review runs from all workflows in one list. Use the Add filter to narrow the results and check details such as date, workflow name, person, progress and status. This view is useful when you want to monitor overall workflow activity across the company.

Delve into the workflow details to precisely identify which actions have been successfully executed.

To review the execution history for a single workflow, open the workflow and click Workflow history in the top-right corner.

The history opens in a sidebar on the right side of the workflow page. It shows runs only for the selected workflow, so you can quickly review its activity without leaving the page. In this view, you can see date, person, progress, and status. Use the search field at the top of the sidebar to quickly find runs by person.

For teams that are growing rapidly, looking for new specialists, and demanding high efficiency in the workplace, having Workflows in the system is a must. It simplifies the working routine for everyone involved in the team and is an indispensable assistant for automating hybrid and remote work, full-time and part-time employees, contractors, etc.