Workflow Automation Basics

What This Feature Does

Assignar Connect turns "someone has to remember to do that" into "it just happens". You do not need a technical background. There are only three ideas to learn, and you already use all three in everyday life.

Triggers: when this happens

A trigger is the event that starts a workflow. Think of it as a doorbell. Nothing happens until someone presses it.

Examples of triggers:

• A site form is submitted
• A docket is created or signed
• An invoice changes status, for example from pending to paid
• A worker submits a leave request
• A new row appears in a spreadsheet
• An email arrives with an attachment

Every workflow has exactly one trigger. When that event happens, the workflow fires and runs its steps.

Some triggers fire the moment the event happens, such as the Assignar Pay events. Others check for new activity every few minutes, which is comfortably fast for business processes. Each trigger tells you which kind it is in its description.

Filters: only the events you care about

Most triggers let you narrow down what sets them off, so your workflow only wakes up when it should. For example:

• Only invoices for one client, or one project
• Only invoices moving into the Overdue status
• Only invoices above a minimum amount
• Only submissions of one particular form

Filtering happens before the workflow runs, so unwanted events never start a run at all. That keeps your run history clean and your usage down.

Actions: do that

An action is a step the workflow performs after the trigger fires. Actions can:

• Find or fetch something, such as the order behind a docket or a worker's details
• Create something, such as a cost code, a calendar entry, or a spreadsheet row
• Send something, such as an email, a text message, or a chat message
• Update something, such as moving an invoice to Paid or approving a leave request

A workflow can chain many actions after one trigger, and each action can use information from the trigger and from every step before it. When a form submission starts a workflow, later steps can use the form's answers, who submitted it, and when.

Workflows: triggers and actions snapped together

A workflow is one trigger plus one or more actions, laid out visually like a flowchart. You can also add:

• Branches. If the invoice is over $10,000, notify the director, otherwise just log it.
• Loops. For each line item, add a row to the spreadsheet.
• Delays and schedules. Wait a day, then send the reminder.
• Approvals. Pause until someone in Assignar says yes or no, then continue — see Approvals.

Once you publish a workflow it runs by itself, around the clock, with a full history of every run.

A worked example

Goal: every submitted Site Safety Checklist should land in the safety manager's inbox.

1. Trigger: New Form Result, filtered to the Site Safety Checklist form.
2. Action: Send Email, with the submission's answers dropped into the message body.

Two steps, no code, and a process that used to depend on someone remembering now happens every time, immediately, with a record of it.

Tips for Construction Teams

• Start with one chore. The best first workflow removes something you already do by hand every week. Small and boring beats ambitious and fragile.
• Automate the moments that cost you. A missed safety form, an unbilled docket, or a late invoice reminder is usually worth more than a tidy report.
• Let it prove itself. Watch the first few real runs before building the next automation on top of it.

What's Next

Getting Started walks you through building and publishing that first workflow.