The idea
Most fleets already know what should happen when something goes wrong. A vehicle that fails its accident inspection comes off the road. A critical defect gets a work order raised against it. The policy is rarely the problem.
What usually sits in the middle of that policy is a person: someone has to read the submission, realize what it means, and act. That works until it's the end of a shift and nobody reads it for a few hours.
A workflow automation removes that step. You write the rule down once, and it runs every time the event happens, whether or not anyone is looking.
The three parts of a rule
Every automation is one sentence in three parts:
WHEN something happens IF it matches your conditions THEN do this
Part | What it is |
Trigger | The event that wakes the automation up — an inspection being submitted, or a defect being created. Each automation has exactly one. |
Conditions | The filter. They decide whether the automation should carry on. Leave them out and it acts every single time the event happens. |
Actions | What it does. You can choose more than one, and they all happen together. |
So a complete rule reads like this: when an inspection is submitted, if it failed and it was submitted on the accident report form, then mark the asset out of service and set every defect on it to critical.
info
An automation has one trigger. If you want the same outcome from two different events, build two automations. It keeps each rule short enough to read at a glance.
Where to find your automations
Go to Workflow automations. There are two tabs:
Tab | What it shows |
Automations | Every rule you've built, as a card. This is where you add, edit and remove them. |
Runs | The history — every time a rule was triggered, and what happened. |
The Automations tab. Add automation sits in the top right.
Workflow automations are part of the Fleet AI add-on, available on Standard, Pro and Fixed Unlimited subscriptions. If you can't see Workflow automations in your account, speak to your customer success manager.
Reading an automation card
Each rule appears as a card laid out in the same three parts, so you can tell what it does without opening it. The name and description sit at the top, then three blocks:
WHEN — the trigger.
IF — each condition, with the values you chose listed underneath it.
THEN — each action, with its settings.
This is why the name matters. The card is what a colleague sees when they're trying to work out why a vehicle came off the road, so write it for them.
Also worth a read
Create your first automation — the walkthrough
Triggers, conditions and actions — the full reference
Example automations — rules worth copying