Workflows, tasks, and triggers form the building blocks of the automation tools One Church Software offers. This enables you to instruct the system to automatically perform tasks on your behalf. Basically, it will work for you and perform actions based on the rules you set.
Everything the workflow does centers around person profiles. As such, only people who have profiles in the system can be added to a workflow.
Let's quickly define all the major elements:
Workflows
Workflows contain all the actionable tasks which move a person profile through.
You can either add a person manually to a workflow or define triggers which will add them automatically for you once the criteria for the trigger occurs. In this way, you can fully automate an entire workflow, which will really save you time.
As an example, you could have a workflow called "First Time Guest." This workflow would have tasks such as sending out emails or SMS, sending a follow up assignment to a pastor to contact the person, adding them to a group, and more.
There are two ways to add a person to a workflow: manually or through the use of triggers.
See this article for help adding a new workflow.
Triggers
Triggers are set within the workflow by adding the Trigger Task or from form automation settings. The Trigger Task allows you to define rules which, when true for a particular person, will automatically add them to the task chosen or designated in the trigger settings.
See this article for help on defining triggers on a workflow.
Tasks
Tasks do the actual work within a workflow such as sending emails, assigning tasks, updating person profiles, coordinating progress, and much more.
The workflow editor contains one or more tasks which list everything the workflow does. A task can be automated or require manual intervention to complete.
See this article for a list of the tasks that can be added to a workflow.
People
People are added to workflows and go through each defined task sequentially until they complete the workflow. There are multiple ways a person can be added to a workflow:
Added manually
Added via a trigger
Added via a form submission
Add when texting in a keyword
Along the way, a person in the workflow can go through various statuses which indicate what is going on.
The basic statuses are:
Queued - temporary status when the person does not currently have a task but is waiting for the workflow engine to put them in one. This can happen when a person is first added to the workflow, when the timer on their Delay task expires, or when their assignment is finished.
Waiting - the person is currently on a Delay task and the timer has not expired yet.
Done - there is no more work to be done with the person in the workflow. All tasks have been completed.
The following statuses are only used when the person is currently on an Assignment task:
Not Started - the person was assigned to someone but they have not begun yet.
In Progress - this status is chosen by the assignee to indicate they are currently working on the task.
Reassign - this status is used when the assignee has requested that someone else handle this Assignment task.
Past Due - the assignment has passed the due date.
Completed - the assignment has been marked for completion.