Skip to content
  • There are no suggestions because the search field is empty.

Creating a Workflow

This article walks you through setting up a new workflow from start to finish — from the initial category selection all the way through saving your first rule. By the end, you'll have a working (if simple) workflow saved as a Draft.

If you haven't read Workflow Engine Overview yet, it's worth a quick skim first — it explains the When/If/Then/Otherwise structure this article builds on.

Before you start

Workflows run when you click Run - not automatically. This first release uses a manual, on-demand trigger only. Building and activating a workflow doesn't mean it starts silently processing new submissions as they come in; you (or another admin) need to click Run for it to process submissions. Keep that in mind as you plan how this fits into your team's routine.

You'll need:

  • Admin access to the program
  • A clear idea of what you want to automate (for example: "tag every final submission" or "email applicants once they're marked eligible")
  • If your workflow will check or set specific form fields, it's worth knowing the exact field names ahead of time — this saves you hunting for them mid-build

Step 1: Open the Workflows page

From your program, click Workflows in the left navigation. You'll land on the Workflows dashboard, which shows:

  • A reminder of the When → If → Then structure at the top
  • A Quick Search box and a Year filter, for finding existing workflows
  • A table of existing workflows with columns for Name, Created By, Last Run, and Actions

If this is your first workflow, the table will show an empty state: "No workflows yet — Build rules you can run on your applications whenever you choose."

Step 2: Start a new workflow

Click + Add Workflow in the top right. This opens the Add Workflow screen.

Step 3: Choose a Workflow Category

The first thing you'll choose is the Workflow Category — what this workflow acts on:

  • Submissions — run rules and actions on program submissions. This is fully available now.
  • Reviews — run rules and actions on program reviews. This Coming Soon.

For now, every workflow you build will be a Submissions workflow.

Important: Choose carefully. The category determines which actions and fields are available to you later in the builder, and it isn't something you can change after the workflow is saved. If you pick the wrong category, you'll need to create a new workflow rather than edit this one.

Step 4: Fill in the workflow details

Next, give the workflow its identity:

  • Name (required) — Make this specific enough that you (and other Admins) can tell what it does at a glance from the workflow list later. "Auto-tag Final Submissions" is much more useful six months from now than "Workflow 1."
  • Program Cycle Year (required) — The program year this workflow applies to. Workflows are scoped to a single cycle year, so if you run the same program year over year, you'll need a workflow per year (or to re-save/copy it — see the note at the end of this article).
  • Description (optional, but recommended) — A short sentence on what the workflow does and why. This is especially helpful if more than one admin manages the program, since it saves someone from having to open the workflow just to understand its purpose.

Click Next once you've filled these in.

Step 5: Add your first rule

You'll land on the workflow's Rules screen. A brand-new workflow always starts empty: "No rules yet — A rule tells this workflow what to do."

Click + Add New Rule to open the rule builder.

Name the rule

Give the rule a Rule Name (required) and, optionally, a Description. As with the workflow name and description, being specific here pays off — a workflow with several rules is much easier to maintain if each rule's name tells you exactly what it does (e.g., "Tag Missing Info" rather than "Rule 2").

Decide if you need conditions

Under If (optional), you'll see: "Applies to all submissions." That's the default — if you don't add any conditions, this rule's actions will run against every submission the workflow processes.

If you want the rule to apply only to a subset of submissions, click + Add Conditions. This opens the full condition builder, covered in detail in Building Rules: Conditions, Logic & the Otherwise Branch. For a simple first workflow, you can skip this step and come back to it once you're comfortable with the basics.

Add at least one action

Under Then (required), click + Add Action. You'll be asked to choose an action type — Tag Submission, Set Field Value, Total & Set Field Value, Assign to a Review Phase, Assign a Follow-up, or Send Email. Every rule needs at least one action; this is the one required piece of a rule.

Each action type has its own configuration, walked through in depth starting at Choosing a Workflow Action. For a first workflow, Tag Submission is usually the simplest to start with.

Check the Live Preview

As you build the rule, watch the Live Preview panel on the right. It translates your rule into plain language in real time:

  • When: Workflow is run manually (On-Demand)
  • Only If:  a summary of your conditions (or "Applies to all submissions" if you skipped them)
  • Then: a summary of the actions you've added

This is a quick way to sanity-check that the rule says what you meant it to say before you save it — especially useful once rules get more than one condition or action.

Save the rule

Once you've got at least one action added, save the rule. You'll be returned to the Rules screen, where your new rule now appears in the list with badges summarizing its condition count and action(s) — for example, "1 condition · Tag Submission."

Step 6: Add more rules (optional)

A workflow can have more than one rule. Click + Add New Rule again to add another. This is useful when you want a single workflow to handle several related scenarios — for example, one rule that tags eligible submissions, and a second rule in the same workflow that emails ineligible ones.

Rules run in order, top to bottom. If you have more than one rule, you can drag the handle (⠿) next to a rule to reorder it. Order matters most when multiple rules could apply to the same submission, since each rule runs independently in sequence.

Step 7: Save the workflow

When you're happy with your rule(s), click Save Workflow.

Saving a workflow doesn't make it run on its own — as covered above, workflows only process submissions when someone clicks Run. Once you've saved your workflow, head to Running & Managing Workflows to see the Run flow in detail.

A note on editing later

You can come back and edit a workflow's rules at any time from the Rules screen — click Edit next to any rule to reopen the builder, or Delete to remove it entirely. Changes to a Draft workflow don't affect anything until you activate it; changes to an already-Active workflow take effect the next time it's run.

What's next