Workflows is arguably the most powerful feature in HubSpot. Regardless of skill level in HubSpot, users create workflows to automate valuable work.
However, without good documentation, workflows quickly become a black hole of confusion and wasted time trying to figure out why something is happening (or not!).
The solution? Documentation.
How do you document workflows? Here are the core things I believe every workflow needs documented (what would you add?) :
Link to workflow
Change control notes (if workflow is affected by external changes)
Triggers
Workflow settings / goal criteria
Business goal / objective solved by workflow
Expected outcome(s)
Properties set
Dependencies with other workflows
Internal email / tasks sent
Core logic defined by each workflow step
And, just as important - how do you keep your workflow documentation up to date?
This is great! Curious though, what do you mean by “goal criteria”?
Also, to your last question-- maybe a workflow that assigns a task to whoever creates that workflow asking that they document it. Or an email questionaire (say a google survey) that is automatically sent to the user who changes/updates the workflow.
Currently this is not something we are doing… but seems like a must-have process as we scale.
Very thoughtful post… i’m curious what other ideas people may have
And for Contact workflows you can use that to unenroll contacts from a workflow when they meet a set goal.
I think a big piece of keeping documentation up to date is being able to lock down permissions for editing workflows…seems like a lot of users have Super Admin access and mess with things they shouldn’t. I would love to start seeing HubSpot Super Admin seen on the level of Salesforce Admin - where a process needs to be followed to request a change from the designated person, who would then know to document their changes.
When I took over as Admin for our company this was the first thing I did! We went from having 10 SuperAdmins to only having myself as the CRM Administrator , our external marketing team and a backup in our IT department. I can then give rights as needed to edit workflows if I am out, but otherwise it is just me and our outside marketing team. It still gets a little tricky as I have a system I use and the marketing team has a different process, but it is a HUGE step in the right directly.
Hey, @MrBean - good question! That is simply the Goal set in the workflow settings. In a recent itteration of this documentation outline, I’ve separated ‘Settings’ and ‘Workflow Goal’ as separate bullets.
I think this is a great idea. I would love if HubSpot had a notes section in the workflow for us to do alot of this documentation. Then the ability to export the workflow list with the notes. In our system we have myself (the CRM Admin) and an external marketing agency that have the ability to make workflows. It would be great if we could see the thought process, goal, etc when reviewing the others creations.
I was going to say, you can add comments to each action in the workflow, in the visual area itself and then refer to them in the sidebar yes, though no comments can be added to the trigger.
It is progress anyways over no notes inside workflows!
@jspencerdav are you using google sheets, excel, or some other application to track your documentation for workflows? A quick google search for “HubSpot Workflow Documentation Template” resulted in 0 relevant results (hello, SEO opportunity)… lots of documentation for workflows, just nothing about documenting a process. Also tried “HubSpot Workflow Process Documentation Template” - anyway, I was just curious what type of format you use for your documentation.
Oh, yes blog post is pending! We are using Google Docs for the creation… tracking changes is a whole 'nuther beast. The Google Doc includes a document-specific style guide which helps keep the process documentation itself a bit cleaner.
I have a slightly different idea that I think would truly support workflow documentation in the same spirit HubSpot typically provides solutions for us. I would like to see something like a record simulator tool to help visualize the string of workflows that would be triggered by a property change. Imagine the same workflow user interface, but instead of seeing actions, it displays the following chain of workflows after certain properties are selected. You would be able to add events like a property change to trigger the next workflow. This functionality would be great for planning a customer journey and for testing processes, and help to see around corners where unexpected workflows may be running. Would anybody else benefit from a tool like this?
@jspencerdav I love the template you have. I am stealing it. I use GitMind to map my processes before putting them into action. People love seeing flow charts and GitMind is easy and free to use.
Haha - go for it! Glad you found it useful! For my own projects I like to
use Freeplane for mind mapping out complex hierarchies - but definitely not
as pretty as GitMind!
Editing my earlier comment - I looked into it and was wrong, you can only get updates if enrollment has significantly changed.
In case others didn’t see - there’s a new update that lets you (maybe enterprise only?) subscribe to workflow updates! So if someone makes a change you’ll know about it.
I’ve used Miro to create a workflow visualization before building it, but it seems like that would be very cumbersome to maintain as documentation, depending on how many workflows there are and how complex they are - every update in HubSpot would have to be reflected in Miro, increasing the chance for a discrepancy. I could see this working for simpler workflows and automations, how does it work for you?
Exactly the same issue! Miro and the other whiteboard tools are great for
inception and planning but to keep them updated for iterations and changes
just isn’t practical. If the HubSpot API allowed export of workflow changes
I’d consider embedding a log in the board or something like that. Ideally
all this would be in HubSpot but I think that is a while away yet.
I would love to start seeing HubSpot Super Admin seen on the level of Salesforce Admin - where a process needs to be followed to request a change from the designated person, who would then know to document their changes.