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Workflow Engine Overview

If you've ever found yourself doing the same thing over and over on every submission — tagging it, emailing the applicant, moving it to the next review phase — the Workflow Engine is built for exactly that. It lets you set up simple automation rules once, and let the system handle the repetitive work from then on.

This article walks through what the Workflow Engine is, who can use it, and what it can (and can't) do today. If you're ready to build your first workflow, head to Creating a Workflow after this.

What is the Workflow Engine?

The Workflow Engine automates repetitive, rule-based tasks on your program's submissions. Instead of manually reviewing every submission to decide whether it needs a tag, an email, or a status change, you define the logic once:

Before you go further, know this: workflows do not run automatically in the background. In this release, every workflow is triggered manually - an admin has to click Run. Think of it as "automate the decision-making, not the schedule": once you click Run, the engine handles every submission for you in one pass, but nothing fires on its own the moment a submission comes in. Plan to build clicking Run into your regular process (e.g., daily or after each intake deadline) until scheduled triggers are available in a future release.

  • When something happens (a trigger)
  • If certain conditions are true
  • Then the system takes action automatically

Because the logic runs the same way every time, workflows also reduce the risk of a step getting missed because someone was busy or forgot.

Where do I find it?

Open your program, then look for Workflows in the left-hand navigation. Inside, you'll see two tabs:

  • Submissions: workflows that act on submissions. Available now.
  • Reviews: workflows that act on reviews.Coming Soon!

The building blocks of a workflow

Every workflow is made up of one or more rules, and every rule follows the same simple shape:

  1. When: the trigger that starts the rule. Today, that trigger is you clicking Run on the workflow (a manual, on-demand trigger). You choose when it fires rather than it firing automatically in the background.
  2. If (optional): the conditions that determine which submissions the rule applies to. If you skip this, the rule applies to every submission in the program.
  3. Then (required):  the action or actions that happen to a submission when the conditions are met.
  4. Otherwise (optional): a fallback action (or actions) that happen instead, for submissions that don't meet the conditions.

This is intentionally simple, linear logic — think "if this, then that," not a complex decision tree. That's a deliberate design choice: it keeps workflows easy to build and easy to reason about, even for someone building their first one.

What can a workflow do?

At launch, a rule's Then (or Otherwise) step can include any combination of six actions:

Action What it does
Tag Submission Adds, removes, or replaces tags on a submission
Set Field Value Writes a value into a hidden (admin-only) form field
Total & Set Field Value Adds up several numeric fields and saves the total into a hidden field
Assign to a Review Phase Moves a submission into (or out of) a review phase
Assign a Follow-up Assigns a submission into a follow-up program
Send Email Sends a personalized email tied to the submission

Each of these is covered in depth in the two Workflow Actions Reference articles later in this set.

What conditions can I check?

Conditions compare a submission's form field values. You can check:

  • Text fields: Equals or Does Not Equal
  • Number fields: Greater Than, Less Than, Greater or Equal, Less or Equal, or Equals
  • Any field: Is Empty or Is Not Empty (useful for catching incomplete submissions)

You can combine multiple conditions with AND (all must be true) within a filter group, and create multiple filter groups joined by OR (any group can match). See Building Rules: Conditions, Logic & the Otherwise Branch for a full walkthrough.

What's next