What do you think about an entire task being automatically assigned to the right person once you’ve changed the status – pretty nice, right? That’s exactly what is possible with our new feature, automation in awork! 🤩
With our new feature, you can trigger processes (in awork we call these processes actions). The actions will run completely automatically when certain conditions (called triggers) occur. You can have these automations be relatively simple, or you can create very extensive combinations.
In order for you to know how to use these automations most effectively, we will introduce you to the feature and take you through these automations in more detail in this post.
What are automations?
Ultimately, awork automations are if-then-then dependencies. You can also specify multiple actions for an automation and create them both for individual projects or for project types.
That sounds too complicated for you so far? No problem, we have a few examples to help you picture the power of awork automations.
Good to know: You can define multiple actions for one trigger automation.
Automation in practice
Imagine you work in marketing in a relatively small team and are responsible for content planning. Everything you publish should go through a feedback and correction process.
Even if there are only five of you on the team, you have quite a few tasks that need to be reviewed by you in a week. Usually, each task would now need to be assigned to you by clicking in awork when your colleagues change the status to feedback.
With the new feature, you can completely automate this process. You can specify that as soon as a task in your project is changed to feedback status, it will be assigned to you automatically.
An example of another very practical automation would be that as soon as all subtasks have been checked off by your colleague Marcus, the task is set directly to done.
Automate complex processes
Sometimes, however, such processes are a bit more complex. No problem, because with awork’s automations, you can also execute multiple actions. Want an example?
Imagine you want to prevent planned time efforts from being exceeded uncontrollably. This case is perfect for automation. For example, every time the recorded time on a task exceeds one hour, a predefined comment could be posted below the task. Also, you could additionally make sure that the status is changed.
The new feature makes it easy to automate complex relationships in your processes. You can access over 700 combinations with the new feature. 😍
Setting up automation – it’s that easy!
First, you have to choose a trigger, e.g., the event that has to occur for the automation to start. You can either search for a specific trigger or click through the icons and select a suitable one.
For example, if you want the stopwatch to automatically stop tracking time when a task is set to done, select this trigger when the status is changed to Done.
Some triggers are specifically related to a user, a time, or something similar. In this case, you have to specify these concrete conditions within the trigger. Elements that require a condition are underlined in awork. In our example, the status is selectable. By clicking on the highlight, the appropriate options will appear. You can also make an entry directly.
Please note: Triggers cannot be triggered by other automations, i.e., chaining is not possible. In this case, nothing would happen.
Then you select the appropriate action to be triggered. Again, you can select the range or browse all actions. Also, for actions, it is sometimes necessary to define further conditions. In our example, you would select this: …stop time recording on the task.
You can also add an automation to a specific project type or project. Are you looking to find out how you can use automations in projects and project types? Visit our Help Center for more in-depth tutorials.
