Automate follow-up work with workflows

A workflow runs on its own when something happens in a conversation: thank the customer when an order is paid, remind them gently when it is still unpaid two hours later, alert the right person after a one-star rating, or hand a waiting customer to someone else. Flows talk with the customer step by step; workflows react to events in the background.

Start from a template

Go to Customer Support → Automation and click Workflows. Under Templates:

Click Install. Templates are installed turned off so you can edit the messages, then click Turn on in the list.

Create a workflow

1. In Customer Support → Automation → Workflows, click New workflow.
2. Enter a Name, choose the Site and tick Enabled.
3. Under When it runs, pick the Event (see below).
4. Optional: under Only when, click Add condition to run only for some conversations, and choose whether all conditions hold or any condition holds.
5. Under Steps, pick a step type and click Add step. Repeat. A workflow has up to 30 steps.
6. Click Save.

Events

The two time-based events are checked every minute. When you turn such a workflow on, it only picks up conversations and orders that became due within the last hour, not your whole history.

Conditions

A condition compares a Field with a Value using a Comparison (is, is not, contains, greater than, less than, is set, is empty). Fields: Channel, Conversation status, Tag, Assignee (bot, human or none), Office hours (within or outside), Has a phone number, Has an email, Source (utm_source / ref), Rating (stars), Order total, Order status, and your customer fields.

Steps

Messages can use {{name}}, {{phone}}, {{email}}, {{order_code}}, {{order_total}}, {{rating}} and {{site}}.

Follow the runs

Open a workflow to see its Recent runs: when, which conversation, the status (Running, Waiting, Done, Stopped, Failed) and What it did at each step. Click Stop to cancel a waiting run, or Run again to repeat it for that conversation.

Safety rules:

• A workflow runs at most once per event.
• If the same workflow starts five times in one conversation within ten minutes, Ha Tang treats it as a loop and skips further runs.
• Turning a workflow off stops its runs at their next step.