Skip to main content

Create your first workflow automation

Building an automation takes a couple of minutes. This walkthrough goes through each step of the builder and then builds one real rule end to end, so you can follow along with your own forms.

Before you start

Have two things in mind: the event you want to react to, and the narrowest version of the rule that would still be useful.

The second one matters more than it sounds. An automation does exactly what you tell it, every time, at whatever scale your fleet runs at. A rule that takes vehicles out of service on any failed inspection behaves very differently from one limited to a single form. Start narrow — you can widen it later once you've seen what it does.

Go to Workflow automations and select Add automation.

The Add an automation screen showing name and description fields above three numbered steps

The builder follows the same three parts as the card: trigger, conditions, actions.

Name and description

The name appears on the card and in your run history, so write it for the colleague who finds it in six months. Critical defect on accident form submission tells them something. Automation 3 doesn't.

Use the description for why the rule exists, not what it does — the card already shows what it does. "All defects on an accident report submission become critical and the asset moves out of service" is a good description; better still is one that records the policy behind it.

1. When this happens

Pick the event that starts the automation. There are two, and you can only choose one:

Trigger

Starts the automation

Inspection submitted

The moment an inspection is submitted, whatever the result

Defect created

As soon a defect is created - whether from an inspection, added manually or reported by a diagnostic code.

Your choice here decides which conditions are available in the next step, so if the conditions you were expecting aren't there, check the trigger first.

2. Only if these conditions are met

Conditions narrow the trigger to the cases you actually care about. Tick the ones you want and fill in their values. The automation carries on only when all the conditions you've ticked are satisfied.

Leave this step empty and the automation runs every time the trigger fires. That is occasionally what you want, but rarely.

This is the step worth spending time on. It's also where most surprises come from — a rule that fires more often than expected almost always has a condition missing.

There's no "or" here. If you want a rule to cover two separate cases, build two automations rather than trying to express both in one.

3. Then do this

Choose what should happen. You can select more than one action, and they all run together.

  • Mark the asset as out of service — takes the inspected asset off the road, using a reason you write. The reason is required, and it's worth writing properly: it's what appears in the asset's log and what anyone asking "why is this vehicle down?" will read.

  • Update severity of all defects — sets every defect raised on the inspection to the severity you choose.

  • Create a work order — raises a work order for the asset.

Free-text fields accept tokens like {{assetName}}, which are swapped for real values when the rule runs. See Using tokens in your automation text.

Saving it

Select Create automation. It's live straight away, and it applies to events from that point onwards — it won't go back over inspections or defects that already exist.

If your rule can take vehicles out of service, tell the people it affects before you switch it on. A driver finding a vehicle unavailable with no human explanation is the most avoidable problem this feature causes.

A worked example

Here's a complete rule, built the way you'd build it on a real account.

The policy: anything found after an accident is serious until a mechanic says otherwise, and the vehicle doesn't go back out in the meantime.

  1. Name: Critical defect on accident form submission.

  2. Description: All defects belonging to an accident report submission become critical and the asset moves out of service.

  3. Trigger: Inspection submitted.

  4. Conditions: tick Inspection has passed or failed and set the outcome to Failed. Tick Submitted on a specific form and select your accident report form.

  5. Actions: tick Mark the asset as out of service and write a reason. Tick Update severity of all defects and choose Critical.

  6. Create automation.

Note how narrow it is. It only fires on one form, and only when that form fails. Everything else your fleet submits that day will pass straight by it.

Next

Did this answer your question?