Scheduled Workflows

Posted on by Kim Hvidkjaer

Scheduled Workflows enable you to run periodic tasks to automate workflows. Workflows are executed even in your absence. Now that the tasks are automated, you can spend more time on your business operations. Here are some examples where Scheduled Workflows would be useful

  1. Send email to customer and account manager, 2 days before the invoice due date, if the invoice hasn’t been paid until that date.
  2. Escalate a ticket to support manager if the ticket is open for more than 4 hours.
  3. Send email to the sales manager if the opportunity Close Date has elapsed, but the opportunity isn’t closed yet.

 

Contents

Workflow running conditions

Schedule Workflows feature offers you a wide variety of options on when to run your workflow. The options include:

  1. Hourly: Workflow is executed every hour
  2. Daily: Workflow is executed everyday at the specified time
  3. Weekly: Workflow is executed on the selected days of every week
  4. On Specific Date: Workflow is executed on the selected date
  5. Monthly: Workflow is executed on the selected days of every month
  6. Yearly: Workflow is executed on the selected days of every year

 

ScheduleWorkflowTickets

Workflow filter conditions

Filter conditions help you to configure periodic workflow conditions. For date fields, you can have your workflows trigger tasks anytime before and after the current date.

SWorkflow

 

The following conditions are supported in Scheduled Workflows.

  1. Less than hours ago
  2. More than hours ago
  3. Less than days ago
  4. More than days ago
  5. Less than hours later
  6. More than hours later
  7. More than days later
  8. Less than days later
  9. Days ago
  10. Days later

 

Example 1: Escalate a ticket if it is opened for more than 4 hours

In this example, we will configure a workflow to escalate a ticket if it’s not responded for more than four hours. You can have the workflow either escalate the ticket to the support manager, or trigger an email alert, or do both. This workflow is executed once in every hour.

TicketEscalated

Here’s how to escalate your ticket

  1. Click gear icon Setting.png icon in the top right corner
  2. Click CRM Settings
  3. Click ‘Other Settings’ drop-down in the left
  4. Click Workflows
  5. Click New Workflow
  6. In the ‘Creating Workflow’ page, under the ‘Schedule Workflow’ tab, Select Tickets from the Select Module dropdown
  7. Provide description for future reference
  8. Under ‘Specify when to execute this Workflow’ options, select the Schedule radio-button, and select Hourly from the ‘Run Workflow’ dropdown

TicketsScheduleWorkflow

9. Click Next
10. Under the ‘Add Conditions’ tab, provide the filter conditions. Two conditions need to be configured: Ticket is created four hours ago, and Status is Open.

AddConditionsSW

11. After configuring the conditions, click Next
12. And finally, you need to escalate the ticket to the Support Manager. To escalate, click Add Task button under the ‘Add Tasks’ tab
13. Click Update Fields
14. Two new fields are displayed. From the first field, select Assigned to. From the second dropdown field, select desired user to whom the ticket should be assigned.
15. Once you’re done, click Save

TicketAssignedSM

 

Send an email to the customer, 2 days before the invoice due date, if the invoice hasn’t been paid until that date

Scheduled workflows help you to streamline your follow-up process by sending them regular email alerts to get paid punctually. We are going to create a scheduled workflow that automatically triggers an email 2 days before the invoice due date, if the invoice hasn’t been paid until that date. You can have this workflow send an email alert to the sales manager, or customer, or even both. This workflow is executed once in a day on the specified time.

TwodayslaterSW

Here’s how to send invoice due date alerts to your customers

  1. Click gear icon Setting.png icon in the top right corner
  2. Click CRM Settings
  3. Click ‘Other Settings’ drop-down in the left
  4. Click Workflows
  5. Click New Workflow
  6. In the ‘Creating Workflow’ page, under the ‘Schedule Workflow’ tab, Select Invoice from the Select Module dropdown
  7. Provide description for future reference
  8. Under ‘Specify when to execute this Workflow’ options, select the Schedule radio-button, and select Daily from the ‘Run Workflow’ dropdown

ScheduledInvoiceDD

9. Click Next
10. Under the ‘Add Conditions’ tab, provide the filter conditions. Two conditions need to be configured: Due Date is 2 days later, and Status is not Paid.

DDtwodayslater

11. After configuring the conditions, click Next
12. And finally, you need to send email alerts to your customer and sales manager. To compose an email alert, click Add Task
13. Click Send Mail
14. Provide Task Title — Just for your reference. In the To field, select email recipients. Provide catchy subject and compose your email body.

SWEmailCompose