Workflow Automations 101

What are Workflows?

At the heart of it, a workflow helps you complete repetitive tasks. You set it up once and it runs without your action required. It saves you SO much time and truly allows you to scale your business.

In more formal terms, a workflow is a chronological list of tasks to be carried out with a "Trigger" that automatically starts the sequence of Actions to take place.

Example: Someone fills out a form and you want a notification sent to you, your team, and the client. Then you want the client to receive a series of emails. All of this and more is powered by Automation!

Triggers & Actions

There are two main parts to every workflow: Triggers and Actions.

Workflow Triggers

This is the event that adds a new contact to the workflow. The trigger is a circumstance or set of circumstances that needs to be met before the actions listed are to be performed.

Examples:

• Add a contact to a workflow when they book an appointment on your calendar
• Add a contact to a workflow when a payment is made
• Add a contact to a workflow when they submit a form

Workflow Actions

Actions occur after the contact is added to a Workflow. They only begin after a trigger adds a contact to the workflow. Then, the Workflow will execute the actions the user creates.

Examples:

• Send a confirmation email after a form submission
• Send a thank you message after a purchase
• Grant access to a membership area
• Create a task for your team
• Update a contact field or tag

Creating a Workflow

There are three steps to creating automation in the workflow builder:

1. Choose a Trigger

   Go to Automation → Workflows in the left menu. Click + Create Workflow and choose "Start from Scratch" or select a Recipe template. In the builder, click "Add Trigger" and select your desired trigger from the pop-out menu. You can create multiple triggers in the same workflow!

2. Add Trigger Filters (Optional)

   Filters allow you to be more specific about what will trigger the workflow. For example, if using a "Call Status" trigger, add a filter to trigger only for incoming calls to a specific number.

3. Add Workflow Actions

   Select "Add Action" to open the pop-out action menu. Choose from sending SMS, emails, updating contacts, creating tasks, and much more. Build your sequence of actions that will execute when the trigger fires.

Once complete, toggle the workflow from Draft to Publish to activate it.

Tasks Worth Automating

The simple answer is: anything repetitive or repeatable. Automations work faster than manual processes and once set up, make few (if any) mistakes.

Here are examples of tasks worth automating:

• Lead Nurturing Campaigns — Set up automated email sequences to nurture leads at different stages of the sales funnel
• Appointment Scheduling — Implement automated appointment scheduling where leads can book directly through your website
• Follow-Up Communications — Automate follow-up emails or SMS after a lead takes a specific action
• Customer Onboarding — Create automated onboarding sequences for new customers
• Feedback Surveys — Automatically send feedback surveys after a purchase
• Lead Scoring — Use automation to score leads based on their interactions
• Data Entry — Automatically capture leads from forms and update your CRM
• Event Registration — Set up automated event registration and reminder sequences
• Abandoned Cart Recovery — Send automated reminders about abandoned carts

Advanced Workflows

IF/Else Conditions

Within a workflow, you can add an if/else condition, allowing you to redirect the flow of contacts to specific paths based on different filter criteria. This allows a split and unique experience based on the contact within a workflow.

Chaining Multiple Workflows

When working with automation, you will notice the need for multiple workflows to achieve a task. A common pattern is creating a workflow per stage in your sales process pipeline:

• Each new triggered workflow removes the contact from previous workflows
• The opportunity is updated to move to the correct pipeline stage
• Prevents unrelated flows from triggering out of turn

Webhooks

You can use webhooks in Go High Level Workflows to make other non-GHL platforms communicate with Go High Level. This enables you to further automate your business needs with external tools and services.