Workflows
The follow-up that always happens.
Say what should happen when a response lands, and it happens — every response, at three in the morning, whether or not anybody remembered.
Six families of block.
Reach somebody, decide something, hand a person a job, or ask a model.
Reach somebody
To the respondent, or an address you choose.
- Send an email
- Notify the team
- Slack
- Microsoft Teams
Decide
Take one path or the other — on the answers, or on what the mail did.
- If
- Otherwise
- Switch
- Loop
Hand it to a person
Hold here until somebody approves — a rejection stops the run.
- Approval
- Create task
- Complete task
- Find tasks
Do the paperwork
Put the answers onto a PDF you already use, and file the copy.
- Fill a PDF
- Set an answer
- Add record to list
- Update record
Wait
Hold here for a while, then carry on — a day, a week.
- Delay
- Delay until
- Repeat on a schedule
Ask a model
Read a page and answer a question about it.
- Web agent
- Custom agent
- Classify record
- Summarize record
Or start from one that already works.
Each one arrives built and deliberately unfinished — it lists what you still have to fill in.
[01]
Timesheet → approval → accounting
Every pay period: remind yourself, get it approved, then send it on.
You fill in: put your own address on the first email · choose the folder you file each timesheet in · choose who approves it · put the accounting address on the last email
[02]
Follow up whoever hasn’t opened
Send, wait three days, then write again — but only to the ones who never looked.
You fill in: write the first email · write the follow-up
[03]
Fill the paperwork when a response arrives
Fill your PDF from the answers, file the copy, and let the team know.
You fill in: choose the PDF template and place the answers on it
[04]
Weekly summary email
Every Monday morning, send a note to the people who need the week’s picture.
You fill in: choose who it goes to · write what the summary should say
While it runs
You can see exactly what it did.
A run is a list of steps with a result on each. Nothing about it is a black box, which is the only reason it is safe to let it send mail on your behalf.
It runs as somebody
A workflow can only touch what the person it runs as could touch.
It can wait for a person
An approval holds the run — no deadline, so it waits as long as it takes.
A rejection stops it
Nothing downstream of a refused approval ever runs.
Off is one switch
Disable a workflow and the next trigger does nothing at all.
The rest of it.
Workflows are one part of what a record can do on its own.
Stop being the automation. Write it down once.
Build a workflow on a form you already have. Nothing sends until you turn it on.