Identify Potential Workflows

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Identify routine business processes that can be automated with a workflow.
  
• Explain the components of a workflow.
  
• Manage access permissions for Workflow Builder.
  

Identify Business Processes to Automate

Before building workflows, consider common processes your team currently spends time on that can be automated for efficiency and productivity. Routine tasks like reviewing time-off requests, managing incidents, or asking for project updates are examples of tasks that can be automated using workflows.

We’ll be referring to business processes throughout this module, so let’s define it. A business process is a series of sequential, repeatable tasks that need to be completed in order to reach a certain goal.

Sometimes these processes are obvious and formalized, like onboarding new employees or triaging help desk tickets. Other times, they evolve organically in response to a team's specific needs, like sharing project updates or providing feedback.

Here are some more examples of business processes to consider automating.

• Employee onboarding
  
• Customer support
  
• Customer onboarding
  
• Reviewing content and communications
  
• Marketing campaigns
  
• Requests and approvals (vacation requests, documents, expense claims)
  
• Travel booking
  
• Purchase-order fulfillment
  
• Reporting status updates
  
• Feedback collection
  
• Q&A sessions
  
• Incident management
  

Take a look at a few examples of use cases in more detail below.

The automation of multistep tasks is called a workflow, and most tasks or processes you perform at work can be made into a workflow. By streamlining routine processes into workflows, you can improve productivity, product quality, and even employee morale. Workflows can combat context-switching between multiple applications so everyone stays focused on what really matters.

Components of a Workflow

There are multiple components that make up a workflow. Some components are required to execute the workflow. And others are optional and can further customize the workflow for your needs. As you build your workflow, you configure each component to complete a business process or task in Slack.

With Slack’s visual interface of triggers and steps, you can easily set up your workflow components to do things like show a form to collect information to share in Slack, or send a custom message when someone joins a Slack channel. In the following units, you learn about creating workflows from scratch, using AI to help you generate custom workflows, or selecting a premade template.

Workflow Components in Action: Welcome a New Hire

All of these workflow components come together to automate a specific business process. Let’s look at welcoming a new hire to your team as an example. In this case, you can create a workflow with these components.

• Trigger: A new person joins your team channel (#team-channel).
  
• Steps:
  
  • Send a direct message to the new hire with a welcome message and a button to fill out a get-to-know-you questionnaire.
    
  • Send a copy of their questionnaire responses to the team channel.
    
• Button: A “Tell us about yourself” button is included in the direct message. When clicked, it launches the questionnaire.
  
• Variables: The questionnaire responses are variables in the message to the team channel. They’re updated to reflect the new hire’s responses to each question.
  
• Workflow manager: As the creator of the workflow, you are the manager by default and can add other managers to collaborate with you.
  

Your workflow components can be as simple or as complex as your use case requires. Learn more about the depth of triggers and steps in the following units.

Access Permissions for Workflow Builder

Workflow Builder can be used by many departments for many use cases. By default, all Slack members excluding guests can access Workflow Builder, but Admins and Workspace Owners can customize these permissions. While Workflow Builder is a secure and reliable feature within Slack, some organizations prefer to restrict access to specific individuals, workspaces or organizations to meet their unique needs.

Admin controls for Workflow Builder include:

• Restrict access to certain members only.
  
• Manage access to certain workflow steps and triggers.
  
• Manage access to additional workflow features, like connector steps, workflow usage in Slack Connect channels, incoming webhook triggers, form data downloads, and workflow exports.
  
• View all workflows in their managed workspaces, and add themselves as managers to edit workflows.
  
• Disable access to Workflow Builder.
  
• Determine whether external people can use a workflow in Slack Connect channels.
  

Before building workflows in Slack, identify routine business processes that can be automated to improve efficiency and productivity, such as employee onboarding, approval requests, and customer support. Workflow components, like triggers and steps, can be customized to simplify these tasks and reduce context-switching for your team. In the next unit, learn more about triggers as the first step in creating a workflow.

Resources

• Slack Help: Slack administration: Manage Workflow Builder access and features.
• Slack Help: Slack administration: Manage workflow usage in Slack Connect conversations
• Slack Template Gallery