Workflows User Guide
1.4 Publishing your Workflow and other functionality
1.5 Making changes to your published Workflow
1.6 Workflow for an example scenario
1 Introduction to Workflows
Workflows is a new piece of functionality in Bloom that will allow you to automate processes that previously have had to be carried out manually. When you create a Workflow, you specify what has to happen to trigger it, which learners it will affect, and what the resulting action will be.
Consider this scenario of how Workflows could be used: You have a group of new starters, who need to complete an onboarding suite of courses in order to have access to the next set of intermediate learning. Once your new starters have completed the onboarding courses, they need to be moved from the New starter group to the Intermediate group, their accounts need to switch tags from ‘Beginner’ to ‘Intermediate’, and the users need to be notified that they have completed their onboarding training, and be prompted to look at their Bloom library in order to access the Intermediate courses. Workflows can make all this happen automatically, as long as the learner has met the criteria you have set in your Workflow.
To get started, go to the Workflows area of your Bloom, and click ‘Create a Workflow’. You will see the Workflows action bar title field is populated with the generic title ‘Workflow 1’ which can then be typed over. You will also see the initial event element of your Workflow.
Let’s take a closer look at events, and then the subsequent conditions and actions that make up a completed Workflow.
1.1 Events
An event in Workflows is the criteria learners have to fulfill in order to trigger a Workflow. These criteria are all based around starting or completing courses or trails. You can select one event per Workflow.
There are currently six different events you can select from:
Course started: The user must start a course. The user does not have to complete the course for this event.
Course completed: The user must complete a course. Workflows have no effect on what the completion criteria for a course is, it just ‘listens’ for the completion status to be registered by the course.
Course passed: This is specific to courses that include an assessment which is used to register a completion status of ‘passed’.
Course failed: This is specific to courses that include an assessment to register a completion status of ‘failed.’
Trail started: The user must start a trail. This event will be met if a user starts any single course that is part of a trail.
Trail completed: The user must complete all courses that make up a trail.
1.2 Conditions
Conditions in Workflows allow you to pick which groups of users will be part of the Workflow, and which courses or trails will trigger the event you have set. There are two fields - ‘Groups’ is always present; the second field switches between Courses and Trails, depending upon which event you have selected previously.
Groups: Use this field to select groups of users. These groups must be set up previously to be used in a Workflow. All existing groups will be selectable in the dropdown list for groups. You can select multiple groups to be part of the same Workflow. You cannot select individual users, you must select the group they belong to.
Courses: Use this field to select single or multiple courses. All existing courses will be selectable in the dropdown. There is an additional button beneath this field to specify ‘Any’ or ‘All’ - select ‘Any’ if you wish the Workflow to be fulfilled by any single course you have added to this field. Select ‘All’ if you wish the Workflow to be fulfilled only when your users have triggered your event in every course you have selected.
Trails: Use this field to select single or multiple trails. All existing trails will be selectable in the dropdown list. There is an additional button beneath this field to specify ‘Any’ or ‘All’ - select ‘Any’ if you wish the Workflow to be fulfilled by any single trail you have added to this field. Select ‘All’ if you wish the Workflow to be fulfilled only when your users have triggered your event in every trail you have added.
1.3 Actions
Actions are what happens when your users have fulfilled all the criteria you have set in your Workflow. There are seven different actions you can choose from. You can add multiple actions to your Workflow.
The different available actions are:
Add user to group: This will add a user to any pre-existing group you select. It will not remove them from any groups they are currently part of.
Remove user from group: This will remove a user from any group you have selected, that the user is currently part of.
Add tags to user: This will add any pre-existing tags you select to your users.
Remove tags from user: This will remove any tags you specify from users.
Update custom attributes to user: This allows you to update any pre-existing custom attributes that have been set up for users. (See separate guidance for how to create and use custom attributes.)
Notify user: This allows you to send a notification to users in one of two ways, either via a pop-up notification, or a message (via Bloom’s messaging functionality). You can add a heading, body text, a graphic (which will appear at thumbnail size in the notification or message users see) and an internal link to somewhere else in your Bloom instance, e.g. the dashboard or library. For the pop up version, Workflows shows you a preview of what the notification will look like. The notification will be triggered when your user exits the course that has met the qualifying event you have set up previously in your Workflow. Your user will see the notification for your message or pop up in the top right notification/message indicator icon.
Alert user: Similar to ‘Notify user’, in this instance the alert you set up will appear as a banner on the user’s dashboard. As well as allowing you to add a heading, body text and an internal link, you can also choose from one of three different ‘Alert types’: Success, Info or Warning - each with their own associated colour scheme - you can see a preview of your alert just beneath the Alert type drop-down.
As stated above, you can add as many actions as you need to your Workflow - you can also re-order your actions within your Workflow by clicking on the cross at the bottom of each action, and dragging it to the position you want. Actions happen synchronously, so changing the order will not affect what happens when the Workflow actions are triggered.
1.4 Publishing your Workflow and other functionality
Once you have selected your event, conditions and actions, your Workflow is ready to be published (your Workflow will only take effect once published). You do this by clicking on the tick icon adjacent to the text ‘Is published:’ in the Workflows action bar at the top of your screen.
The Workflows action bar contains three other buttons:
Duplicate: this allows you to duplicate an existing Workflow. This can be a timesaver if you need to set up a similar Workflow to one you have already created. Your duplicated Workflow will be in an unpublished state, so you can then make any adjustments you need to before publishing.
Users tracking: this allows you to delete the tracking for an existing Workflow. You need to delete Workflow tracking if you want to make changes to an existing Workflow. Please see below for the specific steps you have to take to make changes to an existing Workflow.
Delete: this deletes the currently selected Workflow.
1.5 Making changes to your published Workflow
There is a specific set of steps you must take if you want to make changes to an existing Workflow. Before we describe those steps, it’s important to understand these principles around what Workflows changes affect and what they don’t affect.
- Deleting Workflow tracking won’t undo any actions that Workflow has triggered up to this point - for example, if a Workflow has removed a user from a group, deleting the Workflowing tracking won’t add the user back into that group.
- Similarly, any course tracking won’t be reset - if a user has completed a course, that completion status will remain, unless manually deleted for that user.
- A Workflow can only be triggered for an individual user once. So if a specific user has already triggered that Workflow, making a change to it - for example, adding an additional action - won’t change anything for that user.
- If no users have completed the steps to trigger the Workflow yet, you can safely make changes to your Workflow by following the steps below. Every user included in that Workflow will experience the revised version.
If you wish to make a change to a published Workflow, these are the steps you need to take.
- Select the Workflow and delete the tracking via the button in the Workflows action bar. (This won’t undo any actions already triggered by the Workflow).
- Unpublish the Workflow by clicking the X icon in the Workflows action bar, next to the ‘is published’ tick icon. (If you make any change to an existing Workflow, it will automatically change to an unpublished state.)
- Make any required changes to your Workflow.
- Republish the Workflow by selecting the ‘is published’ tick button.
Alternatively, you may wish to just delete your existing Workflow and start again, or duplicate the Workflow and make any additional changes and publish.
1.6 Workflow for an example scenario
Let’s return to the scenario we described at the start of this guide, and show you how to set up a Workflow to make it happen.
A reminder: You have a group of new starters, who need to complete the onboarding suite of courses in order to have access to the next set of intermediate learning. Once your new starters have completed the onboarding courses, they need to be moved from the New starter group to the Intermediate group, their accounts need to switch tags from ‘Beginner’ to ‘Intermediate’, and the users need to be notified that they have completed their onboarding training, and be prompted to look at their Bloom library in order to access the Intermediate courses.
For this scenario, let’s assume the onboarding suite of courses make up a trail.
- The event would be trail completed.
- The conditions would be selecting the new starters group, and the onboarding trail.
- The separate actions would be:
- Remove users from the new starters group
- Add users to the intermediate group
- Remove Beginner tags
- Add Intermediate tags
- Notify user
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