Automating task workflows

Tasks can be created inside an automation, and an automation can be made to wait until one of those tasks is actually finished before it carries on. That combination is what lets a workflow stay automated end to end while still involving a person exactly where a person is genuinely needed.

Adding a Create Task action

Add a Create Task action to your automation. Inside it, you fill in a title, a description, who it is assigned to, either a person or a team, a priority and a status.

Filling it in with variables

Every one of those fields can be filled using variables pulled from earlier steps in the workflow, rather than fixed text.

That is what makes the task dynamic. Instead of a generic task created every time, you get one built from the actual details of whatever triggered the automation, the customer's name, the booking in question, whatever data the workflow already has at that point.

Setting a deadline

The deadline does not have to be a fixed date. It can be set relative to an event date or another date field already on the entity.

Add an offset, before or after that date, then set how far, in days, weeks, months or whatever unit fits. A task could be due three days before the event, or a week after the booking was first created, worked out automatically from the entity's own dates rather than something you set by hand each time.

Halting the workflow until the task is done

There is an option on the workflow to halt it until the task reaches a particular status.

Once set, the automation stops right there and will not move on to its next step until the task has been updated to that status. Nothing further happens until a person has actually dealt with it.

This is what human in the loop workflows are. A point in an otherwise automated process that genuinely needs a person to check something, make something, or approve something, with the rest of the automation picking back up on its own the moment they have.

Worked example: artwork approval

Say a booking needs custom artwork. The automation creates a task for your designer to complete it, assigned directly to them with whatever detail from the booking they need to get started.

The workflow then halts, waiting for that task to be marked as the status you have set, completed for example. Nothing about the booking moves forward while the designer is still working.

The moment the designer updates the task, the workflow picks back up automatically. From there it can carry on with whatever comes next, sending the client a notification asking them to approve the finished artwork, for instance, without anyone having to remember to trigger that step by hand.

Why this is worth using

Most workflows have at least one point that cannot be automated away entirely, because something genuinely needs a person's judgement or a person's hands on it. Without this, that point usually becomes the moment the whole process falls back to being manual, with someone having to remember to pick it back up once the human part is done.

Building it as a task that halts the workflow means the automated part stays automated on both sides of the human step, not just before it.

Artwork approval is one example. The same pattern fits anywhere a workflow needs a genuine human decision or a piece of human made work before it can safely continue.