Review examples of workflow designs

This section outlines the high-level steps required to create a workflow, and then provides examples that reinforce the concepts discussed in the guide.

High-level view of a workflow

Workflows typically include one or more forms based on a business need or other unifying theme. For example, a workflow named "IT Incidents" might include forms with names like "Failover Status", "Incident Conference Bridge", and "Initial Incident". Another workflow named "Environmental Events" might have forms named "Tornado Warning", "Earthquake Response", and "Fire Situation Conference Bridge".

Forms themselves include:

• Layouts that define how they appear to the message sender (for details, see Define the form layout).
• Messages that are sent to recipients by email, text message, and phone (for details, see Creating Notification Messages).
• Responses that define the options that messages recipients can select (for details, see Defining Notification Response Options).

In turn, you can define properties to be included in layouts and messages. When the form sender configures and then sends the form, the properties they specify on the form are inserted into messages (for details, see Creating Communication Plan Properties).

High-level workflow design steps

With that high-level view in mind, let's outline the basic steps involved in workflow design. With the exception of the first couple of steps, the order is not as important as the overall design.

1. Add and enable a new workflow.
2. Add and enable at least one form on the workflow.
3. Create the properties that you'll need to create your messages.
4. Configure the layout of the form, adding predefined sections and populating custom sections with properties.
5. Add content for the messages associated with the form (email, text, voice interaction).
6. Define the responses from which message recipients will choose.
7. Test the form by sending it and modify it as required.

Approach the examples

We'll use the latter steps as the basic roadmap for the examples presented in the following sections. Keep in mind that the examples are not intended to replace the more detailed information found elsewhere in this guide.

Rather, the examples are meant to show you how to take a fact set and use it as a basis to design a highly intuitive workflow. So, if you want more detail about a specific feature, you can track down its related reference section.

To get the most out of the examples, try building workflows based on them. You're also encouraged to experiment with different fact sets and with the design features themselves. We think you'll find that a little work up front will have you designing your own workflows in short order.