Workflows and their steps

A workflow responds to something that happens, such as a supporter joining or a donation being recorded, by running a chain of steps: sending emails, waiting, checking conditions, and generating assets and documents. Every organisation starts with built-in workflows that send its membership emails. This page lists them, then explains how to build and publish your own workflow and what every step does.

To send emails to a chosen audience instead, see Emails.

Where workflows live

• Organisation workflows: select Workflows in the admin sidebar.
• A club's workflows: open the club, then select Workflows in the club's sidebar.

The organisation list has the columns Name, Trigger, Clubs (how many clubs the workflow is enabled for) and Status. A club's list shows the club's own workflows and the organisation workflows set up for that club, with a Level column (Club or Organisation) instead of Clubs.

The Status values are the same as for emails. See Emails.

The built-in workflows

Every organisation has these built-in organisation workflows, switched on for every club. They are the workflows that send emails on your behalf without you setting anything up.

Your Workflows list also shows two more built-in workflows, Subscription due and Subscription resumed. Nothing in Supporter Club triggers them, so they never run and send nothing.

"Your organisation's administrators" are the people with access to your organisation's admin. The screens call this group All club managers.

Where an email goes to "the ambassador who referred them" and there is no such ambassador, that email is not sent and the workflow carries on.

You can change the wording and design of these emails. Open the workflow, select Edit, change the Send an email steps, then publish the new version.

No receipt is emailed for online donations

No built-in workflow emails a receipt when a donation is made online. Donation recorded by hand answers only donations you record in the admin.

You can't set this up yourself either. Workflows can't use When a donation completes successfully, and an email triggered by it reaches nobody, because that event doesn't carry the donor's details. See Emails.

Recording a donation: "Set up a workflow"

When you record a donation by hand, the Confirm step tells you whether the donor will be emailed:

• If no enabled workflow or email in your organisation answers a donation recorded by hand, it says "No automated email about this gift will be sent, because your organisation has no workflow set up for donations recorded by hand." and offers Set up a workflow, which opens the Workflows list.
• If you ticked Don't email this donor about this gift, no automated email about that gift is sent to anyone: not the receipt, and not the welcome email for a membership the gift starts. The gift is still recorded and any membership still activates.

For recording donations, see Donations.

Who receives built-in emails

Emails sent by workflows are transactional. They go to donors whatever their email consent, including donors who have unsubscribed from marketing. They are not sent to an address whose deliverability blocks all email, such as one that has permanently bounced. See Contacts.

Create a workflow

1. On the Workflows list (organisation or club), select New workflow. The Create a new workflow screen opens.
2. Name: under "What should this workflow be called?", enter a Name and, if you like, a Description. Select Continue.
3. Trigger: under "Which event should trigger this workflow?", choose an event. Select Finish.

The workflow's page opens as a draft. It shows the Trigger and a Steps panel with one email step, named Send the first email.

The events a workflow can use are:

• When an ambassador is published
• When a club is published
• When a donation is recorded by hand
• When a membership is activated
• When a membership subscription is cancelled
• When a membership subscription is renewed
• When a referral is completed

The event list may offer another event. A workflow set to an event not listed here won't run.

While the workflow is a draft, select Edit on the Trigger panel to choose a different event.

Which clubs a workflow runs for

• A club workflow runs only for events in its own club.
• A new organisation workflow is enabled for no clubs. For any event that belongs to a club, it runs only for clubs where you have enabled it. Choose them on the workflow's dashboard. See Organisation automations and enablements.
• When a donation is recorded by hand doesn't belong to a club. A workflow triggered by it runs for every donation recorded by hand in your organisation, whatever the club, while the workflow is enabled. This is true even for a workflow created inside a club.

Publish a workflow

1. On the draft's page, select Publish.
2. Checks: you see Cleared for publish, or No-go for publish with each step's errors. Select Fix errors to go back, or Continue.
3. Trigger: shows the event. Select Continue.
4. Confirm: "Are you sure?" Select Publish.

From then on the workflow runs every time its event happens. Publishing also publishes the designs of its Send an email steps.

To change a published workflow, select Edit. This creates a new draft version. Publish it to replace the old version. Discard removes a draft version, and only appears when there is an earlier version.

More offers Test workflow, Disable workflow or Enable workflow, Delete workflow and View dashboard. For switching a workflow off, see Organisation automations and enablements.

Test a workflow

1. Select More, then Test workflow.
2. Checks: Cleared for test or No-go for test. Select Continue.
3. Trigger: under Event Trigger, enter values for the event's details, such as which membership, so the test behaves like a real event.
4. Run: select Continue.
5. Result: watch each step run. Select Test again or Finish.

In a test:

• Every email goes to the email address of your own user account, never to a donor. A Send an email step whose recipients are a group sends you at most two test emails, each personalised for one person in the group.
• Emails use their latest design, including draft changes.
• Each Wait a while step waits 15 seconds.

Build the steps

Steps run one after another, top to bottom. On a draft:

• Add a step at the end of the chain opens the list of step types. New steps are always added at the end.
• Select a step to open its panel. Select its name to rename it. Close closes the panel.
• Delete removes a step, after you confirm "Are you sure you want to delete this step?". The step and its designs and attachments are permanently deleted. The steps after it move up to follow the step before it.

You can't move a step. On a published version, steps open read-only.

The Add a step list for a workflow offers Wait a while, Find a membership record, Generate an asset, Generate a document, Load a club record, Load a contact record, Load a donation record, Load a membership record, Perform a check, Perform an engagement check and Send an email.

For an email, it offers Wait a while, Generate an asset, Perform an engagement check and Send an email.

Step types

Send an email

• Recipients (workflows only): choose from Select a contacts group. The groups depend on the trigger event, for example The member or The referring ambassador. The groups are the same as an email's audience groups; see Emails.
• Subject: "Enter a subject line". Merge tags work here.
• Preview: the line many inboxes show after the subject. "Enter preview text". Merge tags work here.
• Attachments, in tabs:
  • Files: Upload files to attach files you upload.
  • Assets: Select assets to attach assets. Each is generated when the email is sent. See Assets and share images.
  • Documents: Select documents to attach documents, generated when the email is sent. See Documents and receipts.
  • Steps: appears only when an earlier step generates an asset or document. Select outputs to attach what that step generated.
• The right of the panel previews the email. On a draft, Design opens it in the email builder. On a published version the button reads View and opens a read-only view of the email as sent. There, Versions lists the email's earlier non-draft versions, and Close takes you back.

For what every sent email carries, see Email layouts and sending identity. For merge tags, see Merge tags.

Wait a while

Set the Duration: a number and a unit, Seconds, Minutes, Hours, Days or Weeks. A new step waits 1 day. Waiting runs are picked up again on a regular check, so a wait can last up to about ten minutes longer than you set.

Perform a check

Set the Expression: a parameter from the trigger or an earlier step ("Select a parameter"), an operation, and a value ("Select or enter a value"). You can pick a value from an earlier step or type one.

The operations are: is equal to, is not equal to, is greater than, is greater than or equal to, is less than, is less than or equal to, is true, is false, is blank, is not blank, contains, does not contain, starts with, does not start with, end with, does not ends with.

contains passes when the parameter's text appears inside the value you set, not the other way round. For example, with the parameter a donor's first name "Ann" and the value "Anna, Ben", the check passes. does not contain passes when the parameter's text does not appear inside the value.

If the check passes, the workflow continues. If it doesn't, the run stops there and the remaining steps are skipped.

The panel also shows On Error and "If applicable, perform a case sensitive check". Neither changes how the check runs: text is always compared case-sensitively, and a check that can't be worked out stops the run with an error.

Perform an engagement check

Checks whether one donor clicked a link in the email sent by the nearest earlier Send an email step. Supporter Club records clicks on links in your emails. It does not record opens, so "engaged" means the donor clicked a link in that email.

The donor checked is not each person the email went to. It is:

• the donor found by the nearest earlier Load a membership record or Load a donation record step; or, if there is none,
• for When a donation is recorded by hand, the donor who gave the gift.

With any other trigger and neither of those steps, the check has no donor to look at and fails with an error. It also fails if the donor it checks wasn't sent that email. A Send an email step that went to a group, such as All active ambassadors, is checked for that one donor only, not for each person in the group.

In an email (rather than a workflow), the step works only with some triggers. See Emails.

• Behaviour: Continue if the contact did engage (the default) or Continue if the contact did not engage. Otherwise the run stops.
• On Error: Stop the automation (the default) stops the run with an error. Ignore the error and continue carries on to the next step whenever the check fails with an error, whatever the Behaviour says.

The check runs as soon as the step before it finishes. Put a Wait a while step before it to give people time to click.

Generate an asset

Choose the Asset ("Select an asset") and select Save changes. If the asset offers several sizes, choose its Size; otherwise it uses Default size. A later Send an email step can attach the result from its Steps tab.

Generate a document

Choose the Document ("(Select a document)") and select Save changes. A later Send an email step can attach the result from its Steps tab.

Load a record and Find a membership record

Load a club record, Load a contact record, Load a donation record, Load a membership record and Find a membership record have nothing to set. Each fetches the record from the event that triggered the workflow, so later steps can use its details, for example in a Perform a check step.