Workflows allow you to automate many of the manual tasks you need to do each day.

The on record create and on record update triggers are very similar, and allow you to run a workflow each time a record of a given type is created or updated.

You can add filters to ensure that your workflow only runs when the record meets particular criteria.

For example:

You want to automate part of your volunteer onboarding process. Every time a new volunteer is created, create a task for the volunteering coordinator to give them a call and answer any questions they have.

In the above example, we'll want to use the on record create trigger, but also apply a filter ensure that tasks aren't created for donors.

As such, if you are using a smart/rollup field, it can be out of date at that particular moment. For instance, when creating a payment, a rollup field on People for 'Total number of donations' could be 1 less at the moment the workflow runs. As such, you should only use these when the trigger wouldn't change the value of the filtered rollup/smart fields.

Alternatively, we recommend using a filter for the things the rollup field is doing. For example, instead of using the 'Total number of donations' field on People you could simply filter for the Person having X related Payments.

Each time a record is created or updated, what action would you like to take? Currently, the following actions are supported:

Create a record of any kind in your Beacon database. Often this record will relate to the record that caused the workflow to trigger (although technically it doesn't have to).

Using the task example, above, we would want to create a new task like so:

Update the record that triggered the workflow (the record that was created or updated).

Continuing with the volunteering example:

When someone is marked as a "Volunteer", you want to automatically add them into an onboarding process. You have a "stage" field on the person record, which should be set as "New" when they become a volunteer.

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If you're have the Mailchimp app installed, you can use a workflow to automatically subscribe people into one of your audiences.

This is particularly useful if you'd like to automate an email drip campaign to your supporters.

Trigger a Zap in your Zapier account. See our Zapier guide for more information.

While this trigger seems straightforward, there's a lot that it's useful for! Here are a few examples:

When a new payment is created, create a task for the fundraising coordinator to acknowledge the donation.

Optionally, you could split this by amount - so different members of the team acknowledge different value donations. (e.g. high value donations are acknowledged differently)

When a supporter is marked as "Deceased", then create a task for the marketing manager to remove them from all mailing and invite lists.

When a new volunteer is created, add them to an onboarding pipeline to get them up to speed. This could work through either:

If a donor is flagged as a "Person of concern", create a task for a member of the compliance team to investigate them.

Keep track of the exact date when someone became a volunteer.

When they are created or updated and have the "Type" of "Volunteer" and don't have the "Volunteer applied date" set (filters), set the date as today.

Nope! Just use the Create or Update workflow trigger to cover both 👍

No. Bulk CSV imports and merging records do not trigger workflows.

This is something we're planning for the future, however! Please let us know if this is something you'd be interested in.

At the account level: yes. Multiple workflows can run at the same time in your Beacon account.

At the record level: no. A record will only ever run in one workflow simultaneously.

☝️ This guarantee doesn't apply to form submission workflow triggers.

Yes! As mentioned earlier in the article, features like bulk update and bulk create related records will cause workflows with this trigger to run. Records created or updated by apps (e.g. JustGiving, Enthuse, Mailchimp) will also trigger workflows.

Yes and no. This trigger is fantastic for creating/updating records when things happen in your database. I.e. real-time events.

This trigger is not built for date filters. For example, if you'd like to auto-create a task when a grant application is due within 14 days, that's not currently possible with this trigger.

We'll be releasing a new trigger specifically for this case soon.

No. Record create or update actions in workflows do not cause further workflows to be triggered.

Yes, all of the public API endpoints that developers can use will trigger workflows:

No. Activities created by document merges or email templates will not trigger workflows.