Workflow management rules form the core of your workflow. You can automate repetitive tasks, identify bottlenecks, and streamline your work with the right tools. However, even the best-designed plans can get tripped up by unplanned events or employee mistakes. A workflow management system will alert you to any potential issues before they become serious issues and help you avoid permanent damage by resolving these quickly.
There are different types of workflows, depending on how complicated your workflow is. Sequential workflows involve a series of steps that must occur in order; one step isn’t able to begin until the prior step is completed. State-machine work flow processes require input from several team members, and are often iterative until the task has been completed. Rules-driven workflows are sequential but contain additional rules, usually designed as conditional “if this is the case, then that” statements. Parallel workflows perform a variety of tasks simultaneously, advancing them toward completion.
With Zoho’s workflow program, you can create and modify rules to monitor and execute the outcome of any record based on specific conditions. You can send automated emails to the submitter or approver of the record if the rule is activated. You can also automatically update fields with an automated workflow rule.
If you are developing workflow rules for records, ensure that your approval and assignment processes are set-up correctly to avoid conflicting assignments. You may need to assign different approvers to incident records based on the severity of the incident (e.g. High severity incidents as opposed to. low severity incidents). You can identify conflicting rules by reviewing the workflow rule log, which you can access if you have the Manage Workflow Rules permission or have the wider system logs permission activated.
