Workflow Rules: Build Workflows Without Code

What this is for

Workflow Rules run your processes across the whole platform. A workflow watches for something to happen, such as a ticket breaching its SLA, a bill over £5,000 arriving, or a certificate expiring in 30 days. It then carries out a set of steps: tell the right people, ask for approval, wait, check something again, update the record or act in another module.

You build them by picking options. You don't need to write code or JSON.

Plan: Business and above. Only record types from modules on your plan are offered.

Workflow Rules or Automation rules?

• Automation rules (Settings → Automations) are quick "when this happens, do that" rules for a single event.
• Workflow Rules are longer processes and policies. They can have several steps, approvals with deadlines, waits of hours or days, branches, schedules and date-based triggers, and every run is recorded step by step.

The page

• Overview: workflows switched on, runs today, approvals waiting and failed runs in the last 7 days. Click any figure to open the matching list.
• My workflows: turn each workflow on or off, edit, run now, duplicate, save as a template or delete it.
• Template library: 196 ready-made workflows in 22 areas, including Service Desk, Accounting, People, IT & Monitoring, Security, Compliance, Contracts, Purchasing, Inventory and Projects.
• Packs: add a whole set in one click, for example Service desk essentials, Finance controls, People operations, IT operations, Security response, Sales pipeline, Compliance & safety, Supply chain or Contract renewals.
• My templates: your organisation's own reusable templates.
• Approvals: decisions waiting on you, and on everyone else if you're an administrator.
• Run history: every run, with its step-by-step log.

Starting from a template

1. Open Template library and search, or pick an area on the left. Only what's on my plan hides templates for modules you don't have.
2. Click a template to preview its trigger, conditions and steps.
3. Choose Copy & customise to open your own copy in the builder, or Use as-is & turn on.

Default templates are read-only. Using one makes your own copy that you can change freely, and the original always stays in the library.

Building a workflow

Click New workflow. The builder has five sections, and a plain-English summary on the right updates as you go.

1. Basics

Give the workflow a name, a description, an area and tags. Choose Policy for rules your organisation must always follow, such as approval limits.

2. When

Pick the type of record, such as tickets, invoices, bills, leave requests, devices or contracts, then pick what starts the workflow:

• A record is created, updated or deleted. For updates you can list the fields that matter.
• A field changes value, for example status becomes Closed.
• A date is reached, for example 30 days before a contract's end date or 1 day after an invoice is due.
• On a schedule, hourly, daily, weekly or monthly. It runs once for each matching record, or sends a single digest.
• Only when run by hand, using Run now.

Triggers that don't make sense for the chosen record type are greyed out.

3. Only if

Add conditions using everyday phrases such as is, is any of, contains, is greater than, is within the next … days, is in the past or is more than … days ago. Choose whether all or any of them must match.

4. Then

Add steps in order:

• Send a notification in the app, by email or both. Choose who receives it:

  • specific people or employees
  • all admins
  • a department
  • an access role or base role
  • the record's owner or assignee, or that person's manager
  • whoever created the record
  • the employee on the record
  • a person field on the record
  • whoever made the change, or their manager
  • an email address on the record, or any email address

  Use the tag button at the end of the title and message boxes to insert details from the record.

• Ask for approval. Choose the approvers. You can require any one of them or everyone to approve, and set a deadline. When the deadline passes, the request is approved, rejected or escalated to other people, as you choose. If it's rejected, the workflow stops or carries on, as you set.

• Wait for a set number of minutes, hours or days, or until a date on the record.

• If / else runs different steps depending on the record, and can be nested.

• Update the record, for example to set a status, priority or assignee.

• Do something in another module: create a ticket or work order, post to Slack, Teams, Discord or Google Chat, or send a signed webhook.

• Stop the workflow.

5. Limits

These settings stop a workflow sending too much:

• Run at most once per record means the workflow never repeats for the same record.
• Cooldown per record (minutes) sets a minimum gap between runs for the same record.
• Max runs per day caps the total for the workflow.

Test before you switch it on

Under Test run, pick a real record and click Run test. Plenix shows whether the conditions match and what each step would do. Nothing is sent and nothing is changed.

Save with Save as draft, which leaves the workflow off, or Save & turn on.

Your own templates

Choose Save as template on any workflow, or click New template on My templates. Anyone who can create workflows can then use it. Workflows already made from a template are not affected when you edit or delete that template.

Approvals

People asked to approve get a notification that links to the Approvals tab. From there they can approve or reject, and add a comment. Every decision is recorded with who made it and when. Administrators can see and decide every approval.

Run history

Each run shows its status:

• Completed or Failed
• Running, or Waiting during a wait step
• Awaiting approval
• Cancelled, or Skipped because the conditions didn't match or a limit applied

Click a run to see its log, one line per step. You can cancel a run that is waiting or awaiting approval.

Default automation rules are locked

The built-in rules under Settings → Automations stay as they are. You can switch them on or off. To change one, click Customize a copy, which saves your version as a new automation rule and leaves the default untouched.

For your IT team

• The API is /v1/platform/workflow-rules, with approvals at /v1/workflow-approvals.
• Webhook steps only accept HTTPS addresses and are signed. A workflow can have at most 60 steps.
• Workflows run under the permissions of the tenant. Every change to a workflow is written to the audit log.

Where to go next

• Create an Automation Rule
• Roles & Permissions