How to use timers to keep track of your cards & automate your workflow processes
Workflow processes can often be time-sensitive
As a way to keep cards moving, you can make use of the SLA timer setting to ensure cards are monitored/escalated as needed for each specific workflow phase!
Below you will see some scenarios for using these timers to send reminders/escalate workflow tasks/bypass phases
Configuration
To set the SLA timer for a phase
The timer for a workflow phase can only be set by workflow administrators
Head to a workflow & hit "Edit Phase"
Here you will be able to navigate to the SLA tab
On this tab, you can set the desired SLA timer length for card on that individual phase using an integer value and a setting of either Hours or Days
To use this in configuring transitions (see below Uses)
While editing your desired phase, navigate to the Transitions tab
You will need to change the transitions for the phase to Conditional, if you have not already done so
On this page, hit ADD TRANSITION
After choosing a name indicating what the transition will be used for, you will be taken through to the Transition-builder page
To enable the SLA timer to be used as a transition criterion, you simply need to add it in the Condition list using:
SLA Deadline Expiry + is expired
or
SLA Deadline Expiry + is expired by + [number of days]
Once you have finalised the rest of the transition config (choosing any other Conditions & setting the Transition to Phase value) you can enable this SLA transition by setting the Transition Status to Live
Uses
Monitoring: Workflows & My Dashboard
Without using SLAs for any Transition purposes, they can still be used to keep track of any overdue cards
In workflow notification emails, you can dynamically pass in the SLA Due Date for a card, informing the recipient when the deadline for their action is using enter_phase.sla_due_date in the email template
Dashboards can also be configured to show only the overdue cards
In your My Dashboard view (which shows all workflow cards which you have visibility of in one view), you can hit a toggle from All to SLA, reloading your list to show only the cards whose SLA dates have passed
(This can be viewed most clearly in the List view where an SLA Deadline column is shown)
Similar to the above, the All/SLA toggle exists on workflow pages
Reminders
The first use of SLA transitions is sending reminders.
This is generally for scenarios where the responsibility of the workflow task cannot/does not need to change, simply nudging the user to remember their task
To do this you can configure a duplicate phase of the reminder you wish to send (i.e. with the same Owners/Form Sections/Actions/etc.)
On expiration of the SLA timer, you can have the initial phase transition over to your new Reminder phase, sending out a new notification email
One-off: If you wish to only send one reminder, it could even be useful to mention in the new notification email template that the user is being reminded to complete a task due to inactivity
Repeat: You can repeat this step of configuring the SLA Timer on your Reminder phase to transition back to the original, creating a continuous "reminder loop" until the card it actioned
Escalations
The next use is escalating
This can be used on more time-constrained processes (often found in managing contract renewals to ensure termination/renegotiation deadlines are not missed)
To do this, you can configure the escalation phase next to the original, usually with a different phase owner (Dynamic or Workflow-Group-based)
Bypass
The final (less common) use is in bypassing
This can be used to skip workflow phases where no concrete input is provided to the workflow process as a whole (generally in Approval phases, where a user's approval/rejection does will not have the authority to stop a card from progressing)
As above, to do this, you can add the SLA transition to your pre-existing list of approval/rejection/submission transitions and Gatekeeper will apply this when the expiration criteria is met, as usual
NB. the movement of a workflow card is always captured in the card's History tab, so you will be able to check which transition was responsible for the progression of a card