Workflows are quick-to-access summaries that keep leadership informed and up-to-date. For instance, a Workflow could be created to show current holiday balances across groups, employees who regularly clock in late or even who has a birthday coming up soon. Scheduled email notifications mean that the right people receive the right information at the right time.

This guide will look at:

• Creating a Workflow
• Setting up email notifications

Creating a Workflow

1. Select ‘Workflow’ from the Menu Bar.
2. Select ‘New’ (single page icon).
3. From the ‘Type’ drop-down menu, select the required Workflow.

The rest of the set-up will be slightly different, depending on which of the 25+ standard Workflow types you have chosen. Therefore, the information below may or may not be visible to you. 

Name

If required, give your Workflow a name (eg. Clocked IN Late). The ‘Group’ and ‘Date Range’ will automatically show on the Workflow page. If you choose not to name your Workflow, Focus will name it using ‘Type’ and ‘Group’.

Owner

This will default to the User who created the Workflow.

Occurrences

This defaults to zero. It allows the User to make allowances for all employees. The Workflow will ignore the number of occurrences that this is set to. For example, if you were looking at ‘Clocking Infringements’ and set Occurrences to 1, then the Workflow would ignore each employee’s first infringement and would only show any additional ones.

Traffic Lights

This is a visual aid that works on a Green, Amber and Red warning system. The defaults are all set to zero. So, if there are no records to show then the Workflow will show Green. You can change the Amber and Red limits to suit your needs. For example, if you were looking at ‘Clocked IN Late’ for a team of 10 over the period of two weeks, you might want to set Amber at 10 and Red at 20. The Workflow would show Amber when a total of 10 late clockings are reached (may want to keep an eye on the situation) and Red when 20 are reached (issue may need addressing).

Groups

Select the Groups that you wish to view.

Date Range

Select the range that you wish to view. If you choose a range with ‘n’, an edit box will appear and requires a number to be inserted, ultimately replacing the ‘n’.

Supplementary Data (if applicable, will show under Date Range)

This is linked to ‘Type’ and is asking for additional information in order to further refine the Workflow. For example, if ‘Absence Reason’ has been selected as the Type, the supplementary data will be a list of all the Absence Reasons.

Profiles

Select which Workflow Profiles this Workflow belongs to. A Workflow Profile is a collection of Focus Users.

Extra Data

Certain Workflows, such as Hours Worked, have extra fields to choose from. 

Setting up email notifications

1. In the Email tab, tick ‘Email Enabled’.
2. Select the ‘Recipients’ who you’d like to email the Workflow to. ‘Group Supervisors’ are Users who are members of one of the Workflow Profiles assigned to the Workflow.
3. ‘Subject’ - refers to the subject line in the email. You can choose to include the Traffic Light status of the Workflow (‘Include Status’) and/or the number of records showing (‘Include Count’).
4. ‘Content’ - choose where to include the Workflow within the email. This can be in the email body itself, as an attachment or both.
5. ‘Send Level’ - lets you decide the scenarios in which the email should be sent.

• ‘Always’: email even if no records are showing.
• ‘Whenever Records’: email only when records are showing.
• ‘Amber’: email only when this Traffic Light colour has been reached.
• ‘Red’: email only when this Traffic Light colour has been reached.

6. ‘Schedule’ - set up a regular email schedule for this Workflow. For instance, send it at 08:00 every Monday morning. You can create additional email scheduling by selecting ‘+Add item’ again. This is handy, for example, if you wish emails to be sent several times a day.
7. ‘Email Now’ - instantly sends the Workflow email. This does not override any schedule that has been created.

Additional information

If you now navigate back to the Workflow homepage, the newly-created Workflow sits alongside any others that you have access to.

If you expand a Workflow by selecting ‘+’, it will show you the detailed records.

By selecting ‘Options’, you can choose which Workflows are shown on the Workflow homepage.

All Workflows are automatically refreshed every time you navigate to the Workflow homepage. It will also indicate when the latest refresh was. However, you can do a manual refresh at any time by selecting the refresh button.

Right clicking on any Workflow brings up a menu that combines all of the Workflow actions in one handy list.

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