Workflows

What happens on its own

Workflows, in the sidebar, does the routine work across your sites for you: answering fast, following up, asking customers for a review, and telling your team when something needs them. Each workflow reads as When something happens, Only if it should, then each step, with a switch to turn it on or off.

Your team starts with three that only tell you, tag or add follow-ups, and they're on. A workflow that emails your customers starts off, so you can read its emails before you turn it on.

Where a workflow runs

A workflow runs on all sites, new ones too, on one site, or for your team. Your team is for workflows on a schedule, like a Monday check-in, and for your business's own deals, tags and prospects, which need no site. A prospect opening or answering their pitch always starts a workflow for your team. Change where one runs on its page.

Make your own

Choose New workflow and describe what should happen, like "two days after a job is won, ask for a review". Shingle writes it out on its own page in a few seconds, for free, and it's off until you turn it on. Or add a ready-made one, grouped by what it's for.

Open a workflow to read it as a flow. Choose Change to edit its words, waits and emails in place, choose what starts it, remove a step or choose Add a step, then Save changes. A step can run only if something holds, such as Shingle's answer to a question about the conversation.

What can start a workflow

Besides requests, bookings, jobs and a schedule, a workflow can start when:

• A prospect opens their demo, the first time, or answers their pitch: any answer, or just Interested, Not now or Stop.
• Your site is published with a new version.
• Checkup finds something to fix when your site goes live: anything, or one thing, like a missing site icon or a page title that runs long.

A workflow can also show the announcement bar with your words, for some days or until you hide it, hide the bar, or publish your site. Each waits for your OK, and only a workflow that runs on a site can do them.

Ready for you

Anything that spends credits or changes a site waits for your OK. An email waits when its step says Wait for my OK before it sends. The ready-made review, rebook and welcome emails go on their own until you turn that on. Everything waiting, across your sites, is in Ready for you, with its count beside Workflows in the sidebar:

• An email: read it as it will go, then Send, Edit or Skip it.
• Businesses to choose demos for: untick any you don't want, then Build their demos. The card says what they'll cost in credits before you press.
• A pitch to send: open their page, send it from your own phone or email, then choose how you sent it and Mark as sent.
• A change to a site or a blog post: read Shingle's words, change them if you like, then Make the change or Write the post. A change waits for you to publish it in the editor, and a post stays a draft.
• The announcement bar: change its words if you like, then Show the bar, or Hide the bar to take it down. Either goes live at once, unless other changes are waiting for you to publish.
• A publish: Publish the site puts its latest changes live.
• A request from your own agent, or from Dormer: read what it wants to do, open What Shingle will send to see it word for word, then choose OK or No. After an OK the card shows it running, then what it came to. See Connect your own agent.

With a keyboard, A does the card's main action, E edits, S skips, and J and K move between cards. On a request from an agent, A is OK and N is No.

When Shingle writes an email, it uses only what your site says. If your site doesn't say enough to back one, or Shingle can't write one just then, the email comes empty for you to write or skip.

Prospecting Autopilot

Prospecting Autopilot searches Radar each week for businesses near you that need a website, and leaves out any another team has pitched recently. It's off until you turn it on. You choose who gets a demo, so nothing is spent until you do. Each pitch, and a follow-up on day 3 and day 7 if they haven't answered, waits in Ready for you for you to send yourself. Shingle never sends a pitch for you. Change the trades, the area and how many it offers on its page.

What each workflow did

Each workflow's row, and its page, says what it did in the last 30 days: how many people it emailed, and how many of them it helped win, meaning they booked or their job was won within 14 days of its email, and what those jobs were worth. Autopilot says how many businesses said they're interested.

They also say about how much time a workflow saved you, reckoned from how long each of its steps usually takes by hand, and the credits its demos, changes and posts used.

When you've sent the same email exactly as written 10 times in a row, its page offers to Let it send on its own. Choose Keep asking to carry on approving it.

Shingle noticed, on the Workflows page, suggests up to three ready-made workflows that would have started on your sites in the last 30 days. Choose Add to add one.

Rehearse before you turn it on

Choose Rehearse on a workflow's page to replay it on the last 90 days: how often it would have started, the emails it would have sent and what would have waited for your OK. People are read as they are today, and nothing is sent. A workflow started by a tag can't be rehearsed, since your records keep who has a tag, not when it was added, and neither can one started by Checkup, which reads a site only as it goes live. When a workflow's first email is your own words, the rehearsal shows it written out for the latest person it would have emailed.

Playbooks

A playbook bundles workflows, like everything you use for roofing clients, so you can put them on several sites at once. Choose Playbooks on the Workflows page, then New playbook, and pick workflows that run on a site or on all sites. On a playbook's page, choose Install on sites. Workflows that email customers start off on each site.

Change your workflows, then choose Update from your workflows to bring every site the playbook is on into step. Remove takes a playbook's workflows off one site. Deleting a playbook leaves its workflows on its sites.

Who workflows never email

A workflow never emails a business you saved as a prospect, and never emails anyone who asked you to stop. A workflow waiting on a conversation stops as soon as the customer writes back.

Pause everything

Pause all on the Workflows page stops every workflow at once: nothing runs and no email goes until you choose Resume all.

Who can use workflows

Every team has every workflow, in the trial and on the plan; without the plan, they don't run. Members, admins and owners see, change and approve workflows; viewers don't. Each change shows in Activity.