Workflows

Workflows allow you to track and analyze the tasks that employees complete to perform their jobs. This article provides guidance on how to configure workflows for tracking these tasks and how to view workflow analytics.

Workflows are composed of a start and end point. If a process begins in one application and ends in another, you can track the completion of the workflow for that task across applications. You can also apply a segment to view behavioral patterns for a specific group of employees based on metadata attributes like location, team, or job role.

You can set a workflow to recurring if the task is performed repeatedly. We provide different charts for analyzing repeat attempts to complete a workflow.

Use case

The work completed by employees using digital tools has wide-ranging implications for your business. Completing business processes using these tools provides tangible value and can directly influence top-level KPIs, like revenue. Using Workflows, you can see which employees are and aren't completing required processes, and discover where friction exists.

Benefits enrollment is an example of a business process you can track with workflows. The process begins in HR software from where employees must follow a series of steps to enroll in their benefits program. 

Some workflows should be completed quickly while others can be completed over the course of several days. In the benefits enrollment example, we might expect the workflow to be completed within a day. Employees who start and end the workflow within 24 hours are marked as “Complete”. Employees who start enrollment but don't submit before the maximum time elapses are counted as “Incomplete”. Employees who haven't started their enrollment are counted as “Not Started”.

Workflows list

The Workflows page lists all workflows visible to you. If you haven’t created a workflow or can't see any existing workflows, this page prompts you to create a new workflow.

The list of workflows exists in a table format that consists of the following columns:

• Workflow Name. The configured name for the workflow. The default naming is "New Workflow - [Date @ Time]", with the date and time of when it was created.
• Starting App. The application where the workflow begins.
• Ending App. The application where the workflow ends.
• Type. Recurring or non-recurring.
• Created By. The user ID of the person who created the workflow.
• Created Date. The date and time the workflow was created.
• Visibility. "Everyone" or "Only Me". Workflows visible to everyone appear on the Workflows list for all Adopt users and anyone can view, edit, or delete them.
• Last Updated By. The user ID of the person who most recently updated the workflow.
• Last Updated Date. The date and time the workflow was most recently updated.

Create a workflow

To create a workflow, select + Create New Workflow in the top-right corner of the Workflows page. This creates and opens a new workflow, which you can rename by selecting the name at the top and entering a new name. This name appears on the workflows list.

Next, configure the following workflow settings:

1. Select the Segment of employees you want to analyze. 

For example, if you’re interested in understanding how business development representatives (BDRs) are completing processes in Salesforce, create a segment targeting your BDRs by role or Visitor IDs. Once you've created your BDR segment, you can select the segment from the Segment dropdown menu. 

2. Select the Date Range to filter workflow data for a limited time period. Adopt has predefined date ranges that you can select to filter Workflow data. The Last 7/14/30/60/90 Days options don't include today.

8. Select Save to save and run your workflow to view the analytics.

Edit a workflow

Edit a workflow by opening the workflow you're interested in and making changes to the relevant filters and details. Once you've made your changes, select Save to run the workflow and view the analytics.

View workflow completion and attempt rates

Open an existing workflow from the Workflows list to view its analytics. The Home tab is the default view, which shows you the overall completion and attempt rates. 

Filters

Use the filters at the top to view employee completion and attempt rates for specific groups of people and over specific periods of time.

In the Home tab, you can additionally expand the Details under the segment and date filters to see what the workflow involves. You can make changes to these details to see the impact they have on your workflow analytics. Select Save to run the workflow and view the analytics.

Highlights

The Highlights section in the Home tab gives you key takeaways:

• Completion Rate tells you what percentage of employees that started the workflow also finished it within the specified timeframe.
• Median Time to Complete tells you the middle value for the time it takes employees to complete the workflow.
• Visitor Completions tells you how many employees have successfully completed the workflow within the specified timeframe.

To measure process improvements over time, select the Want to measure impact against a baseline? link in the top-right corner of the Highlights section. This opens a window over the workflows details page that asks you to choose a date range for your baseline to compare previous metrics against your current metrics. 

This looks up what the workflow metrics were during the time period that you specify and updates the Highlights chart to summarize key trends as percentages: how much higher or lower the workflow completion rate is, how much faster or slower employees are to complete the workflow, and changes in the number of completions. Everything else on the workflow's details page stays the same.

You can change or clear the baseline by selecting Edit in the top-right corner, next to the date range already there.

Completion Rates

The first chart in the Home tab shows the total workflows data, with the total number of eligible visitors for the workflow and how many are in each status:

Completed. Visitors who used Workflow Start and then Workflow End within the timeframe.

Incomplete. Visitors who used the Workflow Start page or feature but didn't end before the maximum time elapsed.

Not Started. Visitors who are counted in the workflow but never used the Workflow Start page or feature.

The stacked bar chart displays percentages for each status. Data is filtered by segment and date range. The number of visitors eligible for workflow analytics is the total number of visitors in the segment that have used the workflow start or workflow end apps during the date range.

If the workflow is non-recurring, Visitor Completion is the only available setting. If the workflow is recurring, the chart can show Visitor Completion or Workflow Attempts during the date range.

To gain an understanding of how often visitors are succeeding at the Workflow, you can use the second chart to view workflow completion rates over time.

The second chart in your workflow analytics displays the total workflow data from the first chart in time intervals over the date range. These intervals can be daily, weekly, or monthly. You can adjust the intervals using the dropdown menus at the top of the visualization. Some intervals aren't available depending on the length of the date range.

You can also use this visualization to track a guide's impact on your workflow to see if it has helped drive adoption of a business process and to decide on the need for further intervention. Select the guide you want to evaluate from the dropdown menu in the top-right of the second chart.

Note: Make sure the publish date for your guide falls within the date range for the workflow.

Visitors who completed the workflow are in pink. Visitors that started but didn't complete the workflow are in blue. Visitors who didn't start the workflow aren't included in these metrics.

For non-recurring workflows, the chart is cumulative, allowing you to see how much completion and attempt rates increase over time.

For recurring workflows, the chart separates the total workflows data into granular completion and attempt rates at each interval in the chart.

Tip: If a workflow is being attempted more times than you expect, your visitors might be struggling with the Workflow. When the workflow's attempts are less than you expect, this could be that your visitors are unsure how to begin or finish the Workflow.

Time to Complete

The Time to Complete chart shows you what proportion of completed workflows took different periods of time to complete. You can set the intervals of this chart to minutes, hours, days, or weeks.

You can also choose between a Distribution (default) or Cumulative view. To change from the default view, select Distribution from the top of the chart to open the dropdown menu and choose Cumulative.

To the right of the chart, you can see the median and average number of days it takes employees to complete the workflow. The median number is the same as the number shown in the Highlights section at the top of the page.

The Time to Complete chart is useful for assessing whether you've improved a business process. After discovering a critical bottleneck or problematic process, the chart can help you measure the impact of implementing an intervention to deal with this.

Visitors table

At the bottom of the workflow's analytics page is a table of raw data used to construct the charts. Columns show the values for Not Started, Incomplete, and Complete statuses, and average time to complete. Recurring workflows also show the average number of times completed and not completed.

The data can be grouped by any of the metadata associated with your active visitors to further break down the raw data and show completion data by role, department, or other criteria.

All data in the data table can be downloaded as a CSV file and columns can be added or removed with the Manage Columns button.

View workflow journeys

Use Journeys to gain context and visibility into completion paths, and save time by building guides on the most impactful steps in the process. Journeys allow you to make data-driven process decisions, such as when and where to introduce guides, or whether to redesign the process itself. The visualizations provided show you:

• The series of unique, sequential steps employees take to complete a workflow (process).
• How many completed workflow attempts followed each route.
• The overall time to complete the process.
• The average time between each step.

To view workflow journeys, open an existing workflow from the Workflows list and then open the Journeys tab. Journeys focus exclusively on employees who've completed the process from start to end.

Filters

As in the Home tab of a workflow, you can use the filters at the top to specify groups of people and periods of time for Journeys.

In the Journeys tab, you can additionally choose to see only journeys that include a specific step (Page or Feature). You can specify a required step by either: using the Must Include dropdown under the segment and date filters; or hovering over a step in the Journeys for Completed Workflows diagram and selecting the star icon.

Journeys for Completed Workflows

Journeys are cross-app and can include apps that aren't in your workflow definition. You can add up to five apps to journeys. This affects the load time for you workflow analytics.

The Top Journeys view shows you:

• Most common. The most common path taken to complete a process.
• Fewest steps. The path with the fewest steps between the start and end of the process.
• Quickest. The path with the shortest completion time.

Note: The same Journey can be simultaneously the most common, involve the fewest steps, and take the shortest amount of time. 

The All Journeys view allows you to sort by frequency (most to least common), completion time (shortest to longest), and number of steps (fewest to most).

Select Pages and Features

You can be selective about what steps (Pages and Features) are included in your Journeys visualizations. This can help you understand things like:

• What percentage of employees take a particular step, such as reading guidelines before completing a task.
• What percentage of employees take suboptimal or erroneous steps.
• What percentage of employees get stuck on particular steps.
• Where and when employees leave the process to request help or submit a support ticket.

You can select and deselect specific steps to include in your visualizations with the Select Pages and Features option in top-right of the page. Use the checkboxes in the slide-out panel to make changes and then select Save in the bottom-right corner.

Note: Only previously tagged Pages and Features can be used in Journeys. For tagging instructions, see Tagging with the Visual Design Studio.

Segment by workflow completion status

Decreasing workflow completion rates might indicate that visitors are encountering issues that require intervention. You can then segment visitors into their own group and show these visitors a specific guide to help them get on track.

Navigate to Workflows and open the workflow you're interested in. From here:

1. Select + Create Segment in the top-right of the workflow analytics page.
2. Give your segment a name.
3. Choose Workflow Progress from the first dropdown menu.
4. Choose your workflow from the second dropdown menu. The default selection is the name of the workflow you opened to create this segment.
5. Choose Complete, Incomplete, or Not Started from the third dropdown menu.
6. Choose the date range. The default is the same as the global date range for the workflow. For example, if the workflow's global date range is set to "Last 30 days", the date range in the segment for the workflow is automatically "within last" plus "30" plus "days".
7. Select Save Segment.

You can then navigate to the Guides page to design a guide that displays to the segment you created in an effort to help them complete the workflow.

Important: The number of Eligible Visitors in a new segment created from your workflow can be different from the number of Active Visitors in your workflow's completion metrics. This is because Adopt's global filters (segment and date range) aren't saved as part of your workflow's definition. If you have a custom segment or date range in the global filter bar, you might need to add segment rules to ensure that the numbers of Eligible Visitors in your segment matches the Active Visitors in your workflow's completion metrics.

Segments created on the Segments page consider any visitor in the subscription, across applications. Segments in guides are specific to an application. When the segment is applied to a guide, only visitors for that application are considered.

After deploying a guide to this segment, return to the second chart in your workflow to gauge if the number of Completed workflows has increased. Select the guide you want to evaluate from the dropdown menu in the top-right of the second chart, ensuring that the date range for the chart includes the publication date for the guide.