Workflows in 17hats consist of three different types of items.  "To Do" items, "Action" items, and "Pause" items.

To-Do Items are items you want to appear on your calendar. These are also items that can send something automatically upon checking it off (ie: A follow-up lead email, that you want to make sure is needed before auto-sending). 

To-Dos are also great if you'd like certain reminders to be sent only after confirming something has been done. or that it's needed. (Ie: Confirm Address and Company name have been added to contact record / Send Contract). This will allow you to review the first to-do, then upon checking it off, the contract can either be sent automatically, or you can review it and send it. 

A "To Do" Item can also be anything you need to remember to do during your process that can not be done from within 17hats.  These could be things like calling your client, putting something in the mail, or backing up your project files. To Dos that are not marked as complete will not prevent future Workflow steps from activating, even if those steps require all previous items to be complete. To stop a Workflow from proceeding until the item is complete, use either an Action Item or a Pause Item.

Action items in 17hats are great to use when certain templates need to be added/or auto-sent at any point during the lead/client process. These are things that 17hats can send such as emails, questionnaires, quotes, invoices, or contracts**. 

Action items do not appear on your calendar, but they will appear on your Dashboard:
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**Note: Action items create the template that you select, therefore items such as Quote Reminders, Invoice Reminders, Contract Reminders, or Questionnaire Reminders, cannot be automated within the workflow itself. These Document emails will create/link to a new Document (not the original that needs the reminder). We suggest setting up a To-Do for these types of reminders, so that you can go ahead and navigate to your document and hit "send reminder" selecting the email template, and sending. 

Pauses work pretty much like To Dos, but when a Workflow reaches a "Pause" item, it will not continue until the Pause has been checked off:

Similar to Action items, they will not appear on your calendar as items you need to check off; they will appear on your Workflow tab, and under What's Coming Up in the Next 7 Days:

You can have as many Pause items in your Workflow as you'd like. Since they do not appear on your calendar, Pauses are great to use for the Project or session date, as well as any other appointments that you need to wait to be complete.

Another example of a "Pause" item would be if you have an inquiry stage in your workflow, you may want to stop after that stage and ensure the client is a good fit.  If they are, you can check off the "Pause" item and the workflow will continue.  If the client is not a good fit, the "Pause" item would not be checked and nothing else would happen in that instance of the workflow.

Q: Do my Document and Email templates need to be updated on each Workflow Template when I make changes?

A: Workflows will send the most recent version of a template when the step is due. If a step is due on March 3rd but you don’t complete the step until June 18th, the March 3rd version will be sent.
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The exception is if a Workflow step was “reviewed” (but not completed) prior to updating the template. When you “review” a document or email on the Project’s Workflow, the document or email template is copied at the time you review a step, so future changes to a template won’t be reflected.

*Some of these feature may not be available on all plan types.

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