- Boru’s Workflow Module offers a powerful and flexible way to automate tasks within vtiger. The architecture of the module is based on the idea of Drip Campaigns, where a set of pre-written email messages are sent out to customers or prospects over time, based on logical conditions. The Boru Workflow Module expands on this idea further, also giving you the ability to schedule tasks for VTiger users, and send reminder and notification emails internally, to other members of your organization.
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[accordion title=”Configuring a Campaign”]
- The drip configurations section is where you specify individual drip campaigns. These are centered around the records of one module (i.e. Contacts); however, you can have as many campaigns as you like for a single module, and can often merge fields from related modules as well (i.e. Account fields are available when configuring drip campaigns for Contacts).
- A campaign consists of conditions and stages. Conditions are logical statements based on the values of fields within the module which can either be true or false; stages are automated actions which are carried out once the conditions become true. You can specify as many conditions and stages for a single campaign as you like. When multiple conditions are associated with a single campaign, the module uses “And” logic to string them together (so if two conditions are configured for a campaign, both must be true before the actions are carried out).
- To configure a new campaign, start by selecting the appropriate module from the drop-down menu under “Boru Drip Configuration” and click “add.” This creates a new drip campaign for the selected module, where conditions and stages can be specified. To edit these configurations, click “Edit” to go to the Workflow Editor page.
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[accordion title=”Conditions and Stages”]
- The Workflow Editor shows Conditions and Stages for a campaign. To configure a condition, select the field whose values you wish to track from the first drop down menu, then select the Comparison Operator you wish to use from the second. Finally, enter the comparison value in the text field all the way to the right and click “Add” (you can always edit these later). You have now constructed a logical query based on the value of the selected field. You can add as many such logical statements to this campaign as you wish; when ALL of the statements Evaluate to “True” for a given record, the campaign’s stages will be run.
- Stages of a Drip campaign can take three forms: Email, Activity, or Field Update. Email sends an email message to either the Assigned user, the Account linked to the active record, or the Contact linked to the active record. Activities are calendar events which can be scheduled for VTiger users. A Field Update stage can be used to set/modify the value of a vTiger field.
Emails
- To Configure an email stage, select “Email” from the dropdown menu on the under “Stages” and click “Add Stage.” You need to enter a valid name for this stage in order to save it. “Run On Day” allows you to delay sending the email for the specified number of days after the conditions for this campaign become true (for example, you might choose to send a followup email to a lead 2 days after lead status becomes “Active”).
- You also have the ability to use mail merge fields from the VTiger database, similar to VTiger’s default Email templates. To use these, select the field you wish to merge from one of the drop down menus (all standard and custom fields from the module should be available, the bottom dropdown contains fields from related modules). Copy and paste the text that appears in the text field to the right into the body of the message; when the email is generated, this double bracketed string [[example]] will be replaced by the value of that field from the active record.
Activities
- Activity stages give you the ability to automatically schedule vTiger calendar events in based on the conditions configured in a campaign. To configure an Activity stage for a drip campaign, select “Activity” from the dropdown menu under “Stages” and click “Add Stage.” You need to enter a name for this stage in order to save it. “Run on Day” allows you to delay scheduling the calendar Activity for X number of days after the conditions for the campaign become True.
- You also have the ability to merge fields from vTiger in the Calendar activity (similar to the function for email stages). To do this, select the field you wish to merge from one of the drop down menus, then copy and paste the double bracketed text that appears in the field to the right into either the subject or body fields below. When the activity is scheduled, these will be replaced with the values of those fields in the vTiger database.
Field Update
- Field Update stages give you the ability to set a selected field to a specified value when the stage is triggered. To set up a Field Update stage for a workflow, select “Field Update” from the “Stages” dropdown menu in the workflow editor view, and then click “Add Stage.” You are then brought to the stage editor, where you can configure the settings of the Field Update stage.
- From the stage editor view, select the field that you wish to have updated from the “Field” dropdown menu (which shows all available fields from the module you selected when creating the workflow) and then specify the value that you wish to set that field to in the “Value” input box. You can use the “Select Field to Merge” dropdown if you wish to set the field value to include a merged value from another field. To do so, simply select a field to merge from the dropdown and copy the code that is provided in the “Copy/Paste this Code” text box into the “Value” text box.
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[accordion title=”Activating a Campaign”]
- After you first create a new drip campaign, its Status is set to “Off” by default, so that it is not triggered while you are still configuring its settings. Once you have finished adding and configuring a new campaign, the word “Off” will appear in the Status column for the campaign on the Boru Workflow Configuration page. Click “Off” to toggle its status to “On” and activate the campaign. Campaigns can be toggled on and off at any point using this feature if you wish to temporarily disable a given campaign.
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