Workflows Overview

A Workflow is your company's step-by-step playbook for running a project. It is an ordered list of Milestones, the significant steps from Lead to completion. Each milestone can create tasks, send emails and text messages, check conditions, and ask yes/no questions. When a project gets a workflow, the milestones are copied into the project, and the first milestone starts right away.

Benefits

Plan your work, then work your plan. Every project of the same type follows the same steps, with the same people responsible.
Less manual follow-up. Tasks, emails, and text messages go out automatically when a milestone starts or completes.
Accountability. The Project Team can see what has been done, what needs doing now, and what's coming up.
Accurate status. The project status and % Completed move forward on their own as milestones complete.
Flexible paths. Questions can add milestones or a whole workflow based on the answer, so one workflow can handle real-world variations.

Companies often build one workflow per type of work. A roofing company, for example, might have one for Retail work, one for Insurance work, and one for Warranty/Service work, since each involves a different process and different people.

How it fits together

Company Workflows and Company Milestones are the templates. You build them in Company Settings → Workflows. A milestone can be used in many workflows, so editing a milestone changes it in every workflow that uses it.
The Project Workflow is a project's own copy. You'll find it on the project's Workflow tab, where the team works through the milestones. See Project Workflow.

Quick start

Make sure the Roles you'll need exist in Company Settings → Roles.
In Company Settings → Workflows, create your Company Milestones. Give each one a Project Status, and add its conditions, actions, and questions.
Create a Company Workflow. Add its Team Members (roles), then add the milestones in project-status order, from Lead to completion.
Optionally, set it as the default Workflow in Company Settings → New Project Defaults.
Attach it to a project, either in New Project or on the project's Workflow tab.

You need permission to build workflows: Has executive authority or Can edit milestones & workflows. If your account doesn't include workflows, the page shows “The custom workflow feature is not enabled for your account.”

Importing workflows from another company

To copy workflows from another of your companies, open Company Settings → Workflows. Click the ⋮ in the upper-right corner (or the ⋮ on the Company Workflows card), then click Import workflows. Check the workflows you want, then click Import checked. Each imported workflow arrives with its milestones and their conditions, actions, and questions. Its Team Members are not copied, because roles belong to each company, so add them afterwards. A workflow is skipped if one with the same name already exists in this company.

Workflow Settings: Keep Milestones Completed once Past

This is the only workflow setting. It controls what happens to a completed milestone when something on the project changes later.

Unchecked (default): completed milestones are re-checked every time the workflow runs. If something they depended on is undone (for example, a required estimate is deleted), the workflow goes back to that milestone. A project in Post-Production could fall back to Pre-Production.
Checked: once a milestone is complete, it stays complete, even if its conditions or tasks are later reopened.

Changing a workflow that projects already use

A project keeps the copy of the workflow it received. Changing the Company Workflow or its milestones (for example, its team members, or adding and removing milestones) only affects projects that receive the workflow or milestone afterwards. Running projects stay as they are.