What Workflow Processes Can You Automate? Start Here

How many clicks does it take to accomplish your daily tasks? For some employees, checking a project’s status or updating a content schedule means scrolling through email threads, toggling through multiple apps, and waiting for replies.

Rather than wasting valuable time on administrative tasks, teams can automate standard workflow processes and focus on the work that matters most. Efficient processes are the key to getting more time back in your day, so let’s explore how Slack’s Workflow Builder tool, along with key workflow strategies, can reduce manual tasks and support efficiency for your business.

What is a workflow?

A workflow is a set of steps that occurs in a specific order to complete a task or achieve a desired outcome. If you collect status updates from your team at a certain time each week via Slack, your workflow may involve automating a reminder in a team channel and waiting for everyone’s reply.

Understanding workflow management

Simply put, workflow management puts a series of steps into a logical order to achieve a goal as efficiently as possible. Workflows help standardize repetitive steps to simplify and expedite routine tasks. Modern organizations typically manage standard and complex workflows with automation tools to increase efficiency, enhance productivity, and streamline cross-team collaboration.

Say you have a recurring meeting every Tuesday with your team where you go over project statuses. Rather than manually sending your team an invitation to the meeting each week, you create an automated workflow to handle the process for you. You also set up a Slack channel for sharing updates, along with an automated notification that reminds your team to submit their notes prior to the team meeting.

How to design an effective workflow process

When designing a workflow, visualize the end goal and work backward. This helps ensure each step makes sense logistically and is easy for others to follow. Begin with a workflow design guide and the following principles:

• Visualize the goal. Whether it’s ensuring new hires have their email and software logins on day one or marketing campaigns launch on time with tracking in place, identifying the goal will help you create an efficient path forward.
• Be logical. Structure each step so it flows logically to the next. If steps can loop back, like a project draft moving back for revisions, set clear rules for when and how it moves forward.
• Look for potential bottlenecks. Workflows involving multiple people, whether collaborating or getting approval, can add extra steps and time, so be sure to factor this in.
• Allow flexibility. Adjust to roadblocks or new priorities by adding decision points or optional steps where needed.

Identifying the stages of a workflow process

A workflow lifecycle has three core stages. Understanding how these elements connect and work together helps you visualize the process, so you can ultimately automate productivity with your workflows. Here are the stages of a workflow:

1. Trigger. Every workflow begins with a trigger, or an event that sets a process in motion. Triggers can be time-based, such as a scheduled report deadline, or action-based, like receiving a customer request. You must identify the right trigger to ensure the workflow starts without delay.
2. Steps or actions. Once initiated, the workflow moves through predefined actions that must be completed to progress. Depending on their complexity, some workflows may loop back to a previous step before moving forward.
3. Outcome. This is your desired result. Whether you’re onboarding a new employee or completing a Jira ticket, a well-structured workflow ensures you meet your goal.

Essential tools and technologies for streamlining workflows

On average, companies use about 10 tools to close deals. As a result, it can feel like you spend more time toggling between apps than actually finishing a task. Centralizing information, teams, and workflows saves valuable time. For example, Slack’s AI-powered work OS enables teams to access connected third-party apps, along with project and company data, then automate workflows from a single location.

Check out how these tools can streamline your workflows:

• Workflow management. Popular workflow management tools like Trello or Asana can meet your team’s functional project management needs such as adding context to your tasks with due dates and key details. Sync them to Slack to automate workflows and centralize data.
• Workflow automation. Tools that automate repetitive work help increase process efficiency. For example, with Slack’s Workflow Builder tool, teams can automate daily status updates or organize data into a canvas, so everyone stays on the same page without manual reminders.
• AI agents and assistants. Build a custom AI Agent that can act on your behalf and take on specific workflows. For example, these digital teammates can automatically alert sales teams when a new opportunity comes in, schedule a meeting, or even run a competitive analysis based on CRM data right from Slack.

 

Types of workflow processes

To choose the right workflow management system and automation tools for your organizational needs, you’ll need to consider different workflow process types. While workflows can generally be categorized as sequential or parallel, they also can be grouped by function. Common types include:

• Sequential. These workflows have a structured order: A task must be completed before moving on to the next. Content review cycles and software development pipelines often use sequential workflows.
• Parallel. Multiple tasks happen at the same time in a parallel workflow, making this type of structure ideal for cross-collaboration. A single action, like adding a purchase order, might trigger all steps at once, with both conditional and unconditional tasks.
• Project management. These workflows break down larger initiatives into smaller task lists, milestones, and deadlines to track progress and keep things organized.
• Approval. To ensure each stakeholder signs off on a document or request, approval workflows allow for comments, revisions, or loop-backs as needed, while giving leaders visibility.
• Onboarding. These workflows welcome new customers, employees, or vendors consistently, efficiently, and personally. An employee onboarding guide might allow simultaneous and condition-based steps.

Automated versus manual workflows: Understanding the difference

Reducing manual steps has a huge impact on productivity. Slack’s 2023 State of Work report found that 77% of workers say that being able to automate routine tasks would greatly improve their productivity, and those that use automation saved an average of at least three and a half hours per week. The biggest difference between automated and manual workflows comes down to how quickly the process moves forward.

Let’s look at how they compare:

• Manual workflows. With manual workflows, teams handle routine and often low-value actions like sending reminders, checking off tasks, recording or transferring data, or handing off projects for approval. These repetitive activities can be a huge time suck and zap workers’ energy for more high-value tasks.
• Automated workflows. Automation moves processes forward quicker, with less human intervention. For example, rather than emailing employees to remind them to send in their time cards every Friday, managers can automate a weekly reminder that alerts everyone in a team channel.

 

Implementing workflow processes in Slack

Using Slack’s Workflow Builder, you can automate many tasks, from requesting feedback to filing support tickets. Begin with a basic workflow, then explore more advanced automations to reclaim more of your time.

Setting up a basic workflow in Slack

First, determine your workflow goal and steps, then follow these steps to set up a basic workflow in Slack:

• Open automations. In the left sidebar, hover over the three dots above “More,” then click on “Automations.” From here, you can view ready-to-use templates for setting reminders, requesting status updates, and more.
• Select a template. Click on any template to see what the workflow will do, including scheduled or action-based triggers and the basic steps involved. Tap “Set Up” to begin.
• Complete the form. Add details about your workflow by choosing options from drop-down fields for dates, times, or channels, and entering custom text for messages or forms. While customizing your template, the workflow prompt remains at the top of the form. Words highlighted in blue show what you’re currently customizing. As you make changes, your prompt will adjust in real time.
• Publish your workflow. Once you finish all the steps, click “Publish Workflow,” and you’ll see a confirmation. You can instantly share your workflow in a channel or with a team member, edit the name, add an image, or head over to Automations to edit or unpublish it.

You can also click “New Workflow” at any time to build a workflow, and if you have AI enabled, you can type a prompt, like “Remind marketing team at 9 a.m. every Friday to join the 10 a.m. huddle.” Slack AI recognizes the components of the workflow, structures the automation, and requests more details from you as needed.

Advanced workflow automation features in Slack boost efficiency

Slack’s workflow automation tools go beyond reminders and feedback requests. You can embed workflows wherever you work—from canvases to channels—and connect the apps and information needed to complete tasks. Use Slack to:

• Kick off a project. Onboard new team members or clients to a new project in multiple apps simultaneously. Workflow Builder connectors make it easy to add workflows for third-party apps like scheduling a Zoom meeting, adding a milestone tracker in Asana, or sharing a Miro board.
• Automate tasks. Agentforce in Slack lets you create digital teammates that can handle crucial routine tasks like data analysis, input, and reporting. Set rules that let them update canvases, create channels, or send DMs to save more time.
• Summarize conversations. Create a workflow that lets you instantly catch up on missed conversations. You also can task an AI agent to send summaries to a group canvas or channel when it applies to your team.

 

Examples of workflow processes in various industries

Let’s look at a few examples of how companies use Slack to automate workflows and streamline their processes.

Marketing campaign development workflow

Marketing teams can use automation to plan, execute, and analyze campaigns. With Slack apps and workflows, managers can also quickly onboard teams to new projects, automate progress updates, and even pull in AI agents to contribute as needed.

After centralizing their operations in Slack, campaign management teams at Spotify used automated campaign monitoring alerts to reduce late campaign launches. That not only increased efficiency and productivity by 40% but also led to eliminating cross-department silos and the ability to act swiftly on at-risk campaigns.

IT support ticket-handling workflow

Automated workflows in Slack help organizations save time on IT requests for customers or employees. For example, Snyk, a developer security platform, saves about 8,300 hours monthly using automated workflows in Slack for repetitive processes, such as support request escalations and product team questions.

Likewise, Grab, a digital financial services and delivery app, saves thousands of hours by centralizing its IT operations and automating workflows. Every day, about 50 contractors request help changing, archiving, or creating channels. By automating this process through a self-service tool on Slack, IT saves up to 150 minutes daily on one routine task.

Best practices for designing your workflow process

When building a workflow process, keep in mind you may need to adapt and evolve it. While it’s important to make it as efficient and logical as possible on the first try, user-friendly tools that don’t require coding knowledge will let you simply refine workflows by rearranging, adding, or removing steps at any time.

Map out your process for clarity and efficiency

Creating a workflow process map is the best way to visualize how each step connects. Workflow diagrams and flowcharts use notation to show how the workflow moves from start to finish.

If you’re setting up an automated workflow for yourself, like a reminder or daily channel summarization, then your mapping process will be simple. However, a digital whiteboard can help you track steps and get additional input if multiple team members are involved in a process, like tracking campaign deliverables. Collaborating in a shared space can help you identify potential bottlenecks, redundancies, or sequencing issues.

Continually improve and adapt workflow processes

Automating tasks is only one part of process management. To stay agile, you should analyze activity logs to understand how your team uses workflows. That will help you optimize current workflows and identify new automation opportunities. Use these tips to keep moving forward:

• Review workflow activity: See how many workflows you have in progress, awaiting user action, or with errors. Look for patterns, such as workflow errors or cancellations occurring with a single user, which could suggest they need help with workflow automation.
• Measure key metrics: To determine workflow success, use your workflow management system and tools to track how quickly team members finish tasks using automated workflows—and how often they make mistakes or miss steps.
• Gather feedback: Collect insights from workflow users—internal and external—to see if they’re satisfied with their experiences and outcomes, or if they have questions. Use forms to collect private data, or create a Slack channel where teams can share ideas for improvements.
• Improve your workflows: Create a process improvement plan with resources and guidance to make your workflow process better. An improvement plan should identify problems and goals, incorporate user feedback, and include steps users can take to improve specific tasks.

 

Enter your flow state

Good workflow processes make a world of difference for busy teams, especially when you apply Slack automation. Workflow Builder and other automation features can take your team’s processes to the next level.