Before building your workflow it’s important to plan and design it first.

You will need to define milestones, to-do items and documents for your process. Then add in rules to automate processes.

Don’t try and do all this at once, we would recommend define your milestones and to-do first. keeping it simple. which is harder said than done.

 

Design your milestones and to-do items

Think or milestones as state or phase of work you will be in and to-do items as tasks you will do e.g. a milestone for a workflow for finding a new job could have a milestone apply for jobs and the to-do items prepare cv, submit cv to job site, chase application replies etc

  • what is a workflow?
  • what does a workflow look like?

Download our handy word document for putting your thoughts down on paper here

Get your documents in order

Hoowla has an inbuild letter and template editor. It created letter or email templates with merge fields (which we call place holders)

Here are a few useful guides on how to create them

Turning a Word Document into a Hoowla Template

How to Import/Upload a Document into Hoowla

How to Add or Remove a Template to a Milestone on a Workflow

Adding automation to your workflow

In Hoowla we call our workflow automation rules. This handy guide tells you have to setup them up in hoowla How to Create a Rule on a Workflow – Hoowla User Guides

Think of them as solutions to If x happens do y.

There is lots to rules and here is a brief overview of the things that are possible

  • Add Action to Task
    actions in Hoowla are integrations like Land registry orders or click links to Hoowla functionality like manage enquires.
  • Add Custom Field
    Custom fields are what we at Hoowla call date input fields. e.g. price of the property or date of court hearing. You can define an unlimited amount per workflow type to them be used as merge fields in letters or fill in legal forms.
  • Add Document
    Sometimes you only need documents (letter or emails) if something happens, this is how to add documents to a case dynamically
  • Add To-Do Item
    Some to-do’s (think of them as tasks) are only needed to be done if something happens in a case/workflow. They are situational. This rule allows you to add more to-do items to a workflow based of something else happening
  • Complete To-Do Item
    If you want an action in Hoowla to automatically complete a to-do item as done this the the rule that does that. e.g. if document x and y sent complete to-do item care pack sent. 
  • Create Reminder
    When one action is complete in a workflow sometimes that has a chain reaction of a reminder for that action to be set. e.g. Stamp duty submitted would need a reminder in 14 days to pay it
  • Digital On-boarding
    This rule allows you to automatically setup documents to be signed or data questionnaires to be completed. 
  • Generate Form
    Hoowla can have any legal form configured into it and this rule generates them onto a case 
  • Invite User
    This rule invites a person to track a case using the Hoowla portal. 
  • Send CAL Update
    These rules are specific for sending updated to the CAL third party system.
  • Send ConveyChoice Update
    These rules are specific for sending updated to the Convey Choice third party system.
  • Send Custom Webhook
    Think of webhooks like push notifications. This action lets you push Hoowla data out to third party apps for integrations. E.g. I want Hoowla data to keep a custom client portal updated or update my CRM.
  • Send Dezrez Update
    These rules are specific for sending updated to the Dezrez third party system.
  • Send Document
    This sends a document via email automatically
  • Send L &C Update
    These rules are specific for sending updated to the L&C third party system.
  • Send SMS (Twilio)
    This allows an SMS txt to be sent out to someone automatically if something happens.
  • Send SortRefer Update
    These rules are specific for sending updated to the SortRefer third party system.
  • Send ULS Update
    These rules are specific for sending updated to the ULS third party system.
  • Show information
    This can display extra information on the case if something happens