Add a business workflow to your form

What is a workflow?

It is a visual diagram designed to automate business processes, routine tasks that need to pass from one person to another in order to be completed.
The workflow diagram uses standardized symbols and shapes and describes step by step how your work process is completed from start to finish. It also shows who are responsible for making decisions at certain points in the process.

According to smartsheet.com “Workflows delineate start and end points, the direction(s) of movement, where there may be decision points, what you expect for results, and potential substitute steps. Finally, responsibility is assigned for each step. ”

When you automate your business tasks you improve the organization’s efficiency. The data moves from step to step more quickly, the likelihood of errors grows smaller and it is easy to monitor the status of the task at any given step.

Nathan Gilligan talks about this in his post “Workflow for Outsourcing”. He says
“Most organisations deal with a large volume of paperwork every day. With the increasing amount it can become difficult to manage, which often leads to errors and loss of information causing inconvenient delays and re-work. Especially in a large scale organisation this is an inefficient use of time, equipment and staff resources which can result in significant financial loss.”

There are endless types of workflows, and this makes sense because they are used in different industries for different purposes. You can find workflows in Human resources, Health care, customer service, Education, and even the military.

How do I start?

When you want to automate your tasks using a workflow it is better to make a sketch and plan it beforehand. This will not only help you understand the process more thoroughly but it will also help you identify potential problems or bottlenecks before they happen.
While creating this sketch you might want to ask yourself a few questions to get a better focus. Questions like:
- what is my (company’s) goal
- who are the people making the decisions in this process, and in what steps.
- what happens next? (this one is a good question for the entire process...)
- should the step be conditioned in any way?
- where in this process can there be a delay?

Once your plan is completed your sketch and checked it you can start creating your workflow.
But what tool can you use to create your workflow?

Now there are many tools for creating workflows. Some are cloud based and some are not, some are all about workflow, and some have the workflow in them as a feature.
Businesses using online forms for collecting data and internal uses should consider using a form builder that has a built in workflow. This way you don’t have to integrate your form builder with a different workflow tool. Everything is configured in the same place, in the same platform.

There are several form builders that enable workflow. One of them is FormTitan. This extremely professional form builder lets the user create forms in a flexible, non compromising design, integrate with over 750 3rd party applications, add conditional logic, enjoy built in optimization tools like CRO engine, a/b testing, chat and also - workflow.

How do I create a workflow with FormTitan?

It is extremely easy! Since the this platform is a user friendly wysiwyg tool , you can easily add a workflow from within the Form Builder itself. All you need to do when your form is ready:
- Open the workflow editor,
- drag the objects and connect them according to the desired flow
and finally
- configure the settings behind each object.

For detailed step by step instructions of how to create a workflow, please use the following manuals:
Workflow Example #1
In this example you will be shown how to create a process for recruiting a new employee using the basic default flow (which contains only 3 element: Form, Person and Finish).

Workflow Example #2
This example will also show you how to create a process for recruiting a new employee. It is very similar to the first example, only it has an additional element: a Decision.

Read more about the Workflow feature