Workflows

Turn a task you've already done into something that runs automatically, on its own schedule.

Some things you do the same way, over and over — every Monday, every Friday, every time a certain thing happens. A workflow means you do it once, and then it just keeps happening on its own, forever. Set it up today, and future-you never has to think about it again.

What a workflow actually is

A workflow is a saved version of a task that runs again — either on a schedule, or whenever something specific happens. Instead of asking your assistant to do the same thing every Monday morning, you turn it into a workflow one time, and it keeps running by itself from then on. In the product these show up as recurring tasks.

A few workflows people actually set up

• The Monday morning briefing. Every Monday at 8am, your assistant pulls together everything on your calendar for the week and sends you a short summary — before you've even had your coffee. No more opening five different things to piece your week together.
• The instant follow-up. The moment the notification email for a new contact-form submission lands in your inbox, your assistant adds the person as a contact and gets a follow-up call on the books. You don't have to notice the email came in, remember to reach out, or dig up a time that works — it's already done by the time you check your phone.
• The Friday nudge. Every Friday afternoon, your assistant checks who hasn't replied to your outstanding emails this week and sends them a polite nudge. That's a task you'd otherwise have to remember to do — now it just happens.

How to create one

The simplest way is to ask. Tell your assistant what you want to happen and when ("every Monday at 8am, summarize my week"), and it sets the recurring task up for you and checks with you before it goes live. You can also start one yourself: choose New Task and switch to recurring, or add one from the Store.

Everything lives on the Tasks page, under the Recurring tab, in the sections Your Recurring Tasks, Team Recurring Tasks, and Store Recurring Tasks. Open any one to see when it runs, what it does, and to change its schedule or instructions.

What starts a workflow

Every workflow needs something to kick it off:

• A recurring schedule — every few minutes, hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly (including "every other Tuesday" or "the last Friday of the month"), at the time you choose.
• A calendar event — a set time before or after a meeting starts or ends. You can limit it to meetings with a particular person, a particular organizer, or a word in the title, such as "standup."
• A new email — the moment an email arrives, optionally only from a certain sender, to a certain address, or with certain words in the subject.
• Another task or workflow finishing. This is what lets workflows chain together, instead of only firing on a clock — one workflow finishing can be exactly what starts the next one.

Your assistant picks the cheapest setup that does the job. Every run uses credits, so a condition that needs judgment, such as "emails that look like spam," works best as a check a few times a day rather than on every single email, and your assistant will ask how often you want it.

You can also set a recurring task to stop after a number of runs or on a date, using Run until.

Every run still gets your OK

A workflow running automatically doesn't mean it acts without checking with you. If a run takes any real-world action — sending an email, booking a meeting — it goes through the same review step as any other task: the dispatch cart. Whether it waits for your approval, gives you a confirmation window, or goes ahead follows your Autonomy settings. Creating a new recurring task is itself held for your approval by default.

Pausing or deleting

Don't want a workflow running right now, but might want it back later? Switch it off with its pause toggle — the setup stays exactly as you left it, and turning it back on takes one click. Done with it for good? Delete it from its detail view.

Set once, apply to everyone

You can share a recurring task with your team, and org admins can share one with the whole organization, so a useful automation doesn't have to be rebuilt by every person. See the org admin overview for how those defaults interact with each person's own workflows.

Why this saves real time

Doing something manually means noticing it needs doing, remembering how you did it last time, and doing it again — every single time. A workflow moves all of that work to one afternoon, once. After that, the Monday briefing writes itself, the new lead gets called before you'd have even seen the notification, and the Friday nudge goes out whether or not you remembered it was Friday. That's the whole trade: a few minutes now, for time back every week after.