Purpose

This article introduces customers to workflow automation framework and all the supporting features.

Audience

This article is directed toward new users of the WFA feature and may be especially helpful for recruiters.

Importance of workflow automation

Workflow automation is an easy way to boost productivity and improve employees’ work experience by eliminating tedious, time-consuming tasks. Here’s how you can boost efficiency and effectiveness with workflow automation.

• High-value: With workflow automation, you automate specific tasks and processes to overcome some of the problems inherent in manual work.
• Visibility: Improves both efficiency and effectiveness when you’re using automated workflows.
• Communication: Improves communication by eliminating the need for team members to remind each other about the manual process when something needs to be done.
• Product quality: With human error eliminated, improves overall product quality and also saves time.
• Improves candidate experience: Workflow enhancements helps to improve customer satisfaction and remain competitive.
• Increases productivity: Allows teams to not waste their time on repetitive tasks, they have more time to focus on work that matters and are more productive as a result.

WFA Framework

The WFA framework currently supports recommended (Eightfold created) and enterprise (user created) workflows which is a combination of triggers, conditions & actions.

• Trigger: The trigger is the initial event that will set the workflow in motion. There are several types of triggering events: When candidate replies, when candidate is contacted, when feedback is submitted for candidate, when new application is received, when reminder is scheduled for a candidate, when feedback is requested for candidate, when candidate's stage changes, when a candidate is rejected, and so on.

  Note: We can have only one trigger at a time. However, you can check if workflow automation "conditions" can satisfy the needs.

• Conditions: Conditions correspond to criteria that must be met in order to enroll in certain stages of your workflow. There are several types of triggering events: Education, years of experience, job title, seniority level, and many more. Learn more about the conditions.

• Actions: Action talks about the impacted areas. As soon as the automatic scenario is triggered, you need to define the action to the trigger. You can trigger new action(s) as it meets the different conditions defined in your workflow scenario. The actions are sending an email, requesting feedback, saving to pipeline, adding to the community, and a few more. Learn more about the actions.

List of triggers, conditions and actions for position workflows:

List of triggers, conditions and actions for communities workflows:

We suggest users familiarize with the existing Eightfold Recommended workflows to understand how different triggers, conditions & actions can be put together in a workflow. And then to explore the list of triggers, conditions & actions listed as a part of the Create workflow page to understand the complete product coverage.

Condition logic

Users are allowed to have multiple conditions for a workflow. The AND logic can be used to form a single condition group, whereas the OR logic can be used to combine those groups. The condition logic looks like the following:

(Condition_1a AND Condition_1b AND Condition_1c AND …)
OR
(Condition_2a AND Condition_2b AND Condition_2c AND …)
OR
(Condition_3a AND Condition_3b AND Condition_3c AND …)
OR
(Condition_4a AND Condition_4b AND Condition_4c AND …)
OR . . .

For example:

Creating and using custom workflows

Users can create custom workflows and use their own enterprise recommended workflows. To learn how to create custom workflows, read the Creating and using custom workflows article.

Enabling an automated workflow

The entire list of workflows associated with the position/community is available on the Automated Workflows screen. All the recommended and custom workflows can be enabled.

Enabling an Eightfold Recommended workflow:

1. Go to the position/community for which the workflow needs to be enabled.
2. Click Enable next to the workflow you would like to set up and activate.

Enabling an enterprise (custom) workflow:

1. Go to the position/community for which the workflow needs to be enabled.
2. Open the custom workflow which needs to be enabled.
3. The trigger (A) can not be modified. Next, add a condition (B) by clicking on the Add Condition.
4. No new action can be added to the Action (C) section, however users can modify the selected action.
5. When you have finished, click Enable Workflow.
6. The Automated Workflow page shows that your workflow is now enabled. Repeat this process to enable another workflow.

Disabling an automated workflow

Disabling a workflow allows you to stop a workflow from being triggered. However, the workflow can be easily re-enabled again.

1. Open the position/community associated with the workflow that you want to disable.
2. Click Automated Workflow. The Automated Workflow page will be displayed.
3. Click on the workflow that you would like to disable. The details of the workflow gets displayed. Check the information to ensure that you are disabling the correct workflow.
4. Click Disable Workflow.
5. Click Disable on the confirmation popup window to finish.

6. The workflow is now listed as disabled. If needed, you can re-enable the workflow from the workflow list.

   Note: Actions which have been scheduled due to triggers that were received prior to disabling the workflow will still get executed. For example, consider we have an automation workflow that triggers email to the candidates after 2 days of the candidate application. Lets say the application was sent in yesterday and so the action to send an email tomorrow was also scheduled. Hence even if we disable the workflow today, the scheduled email will still go out as it is based on a trigger prior to the date when the workflow was disabled.

Downloading the WFA report

Here are the steps to download the workflow automation report:

1. Go to the Position or Community page.
2. Click Automated Workflows.
3. Click Download Report.
4. Select the date range and click Download.
5. The report gets downloaded in CSV format.

Log the workflow (recruiting) activities

The automation log is automatically generated when the automation script is run. The designed logs are easy to read and descriptive.

These activity logs help users to:

• Determine if the workflow got completed successfully.
• Determine if the automation is performed as expected.
• Interactively follow the logs.

Automation Opportunities

Eightfold helps customers identify the places where workflow automation can be customized and used. In order to apply automation, it is first important to understand the customer’s process flows in greater detail. Map the action, condition & the trigger to those available in the recommended list. If they exist you can set it up immediately, else they can create new ones.

Configurations

The WFA feature does not require any configuration changes and hence not supported on Admin Console. The only permission they need from Eightfold is for perm_manage_position_workflow and perm_manage_community_workflow.