Do you want to solve real problems employees face every day? Is your IT overloaded with requests, and is their backlog ever-increasing? Workflow Builder lightens some of that load, gaining them some time, and offering teams the freedom to build their Workflow Apps. What if I told you that anyone can build the first version of a workflow app in a matter of minutes and with no previous app-building experience?

Meet Workflow Builder! Workflow Builder helps multidisciplinary teams unleash their business expertise and empowers them to create workflow apps, saving IT from adding yet another task to their backlog. With Workflow Builder, anyone can build workflow apps, publish, and test them in minutes! Workflow Builder is IT-governed. IT managers keep full control of the administration of IT assets; they will register the builder and set up the governance model and end-user management, then grant access to the people who design and own processes, so they can build apps to fit their specific needs. Multidisciplinary teams work together within the same common platform, from process design to app development to deployment. 

What's Workflow Builder?

In a nutshell, it's a visual tool for building workflow apps. It allows multidisciplinary teams to solve their own productivity challenges through app development. Process owners, business experts, and just about anyone defining processes will need a tool to make the processes usable. And because prebuilt systems are a one-size-fits-all, they can be complicated and frustrating.

Is Workflow Builder Right For My Organization?

If your organization owns processes in paper or email form, then yes! If your teams own processes, then yes! If your teams need a simple way to manage those processes, then yes! Workflow Builder offers the freedom to build workflow apps to fit specific workflow needs.

Today, more than ever, IT teams are overwhelmed, companies are scrambling to digitize face-to-face interactions, and asking IT to develop yet another app may either take too long or not fit IT's budget, priorities, etc. IT registers and sets up Workflow Builder and promotes it to the teams, for instance, to the business experts, so they can have the freedom (freedom within the limits IT has defined) to build apps that fit the organization’s needs. IT governance extends the team of in-house app developers to include employees with different expertise, taking advantage of their specialized knowledge to build apps that fit the use-cases they're familiar with. Workflow Builder is reliable. The apps are generated with the same standard architectures and frameworks as their pro-developed counterparts. Don't sacrifice quality, time, or expense.

Each organization's processes are unique, and therefore need flexible solutions. With Workflow Builder, anyone, from process owners to developers, can design, build, monitor, and improve perfect-fit case management apps.

A workflow app can help:

  • Track and improve productivity
  • Track and promote collaboration between different teams
  • Track project status
  • Track and manage information for several sources

Are you ready to get started with Workflow Builder? Quickly build a workflow app today.  

Getting Started: Create Custom Forms

Users will start by creating custom forms to request information and trigger the start of the workflow. Let's look at a familiar, simple scenario: a workflow app to manage employee absences.

The form will include the fields that will provide the information needed to make a decision, such as absence type and date(s) of absence.

Organize the Workflow

Business process management (BPM) workflows usually have these characteristics:

  • A well-defined sequence of activities that are expected to happen in the normal course of business
  • Activities that are carried out frequently but not continuously
  • Many activities that are predictable and can be automated

In BPM, the process owner owns the process and defines the sequence of activities, and can fine-tune the workflow to optimize it for speed and efficiency.

So next, we’ll be adding steps to the flow. For tasks that need a knowledge worker's input, we’ll choose manual tasks, and we can automate the routine, run-of-the-mill tasks using conditions.

For instance, a requester asks to purchase some office supplies, and the company’s policy is to approve any purchase under $30 automatically. Use a condition where requests under $30 are automatically approved and save some time. We then send the requester an automatic email, approving the request. We can add notifications to all mais steps of the workflow, not only for the requester but also for the ones that need to manage the request, approving, rejecting, and more. Save time and keep everyone informed of the request status from the moment it’s submitted to the moment it’s closed. 

In cases where we want a worker to manage the request, we should use a manual task.

Build a Workflow App in Minutes

Once we're done, we hit the Publish button. After the first publish, it'll take only 2 minutes to create and compile the database, business logic, screens, and actions. Impressive, right? Once published, we can take it for a test-drive and share it with our teams, or stakeholders. We can always go back and tweak it here and there until we get the perfect setup for making our case management as efficient and user friendly as possible.

The generated workflow app has been designed to promote collaboration between teams. Users can add comments or notes to centralize any information that helps build knowledge and increase the context needed to manage a request. When working on the request, users also have access to a timeline of all activities that have led to the workflow’s current status. Users overseeing the entire process can have a bird’s eye view of all requests, including those not assigned to them.

Get Started with Workflow Builder Today

We're continuously developing Workflow Builder, and your feedback is invaluable. You're the reason we get up in the morning, excited to create new products. We're never done. Your feedback helps us take Workflow Builder to the next level, add new features, and improve your user experience. If you want to report an issue, ask a question, or share your thoughts and suggestions, click Send feedback inside Workflow Builder located at the top right corner of the interface.

With Workflow Builder, anyone can build IT-governed workflow apps. Save IT from yet another backlog task and empower teams to build a workflow app themselves. The apps enable teams to manage and oversee processes, and keep track of requests. So try Workflow Builder today.