Automations | WorkZerk Help

Chasing people is the part of onboarding that eats the day. Automations do it for you: an invite that goes out the moment you add somebody, an alert when their link is never opened, a warning thirty days before a certificate lapses, a nudge to yourself when a file has sat unreviewed.

Automations holds two things. The system emails are messages WorkZerk already sends for you, and you edit their wording. Your own automations are rules you build: one trigger, then a list of actions that run in order. This article is the reference for both. For worked rules you can copy, see automation examples for onboarding.

The system emails

The page groups every automation by whether it is sending: Switched on, Always on and Switched off. A system email carries a Default badge. Open one to change its subject and body, or use Reset to put back the original wording and actions (its switch and day count stay as you set them). A system email cannot be deleted.

Always on holds the emails behind something you or the person does. They have no switch, only wording:

Portal invite. The invite with their private link, sent when you click Send (or when a rule sends it).
Requests completed email. Their receipt once everything required is in, with an itemized record of what they gave you.
Expiry date prompt. What goes out when you click Prompt on the Requests screen.
Upload rejected email. The notice when you reject a file, carrying your reason.
Self-registration email. The confirmation and private link somebody gets after joining through a self-registration link or QR code.

Nine more carry a switch and a day count you can change once it is open. Two start switched on, the outstanding requests reminder and invite not opened, because somebody stalled on their requests is the most common hold-up. The other seven start switched off, because nobody should begin chasing people about their documents automatically without choosing to. Six email the person:

Outstanding requests reminder. Switched on. 7 days after their invite, if required items are still missing, then a Wait of 7 days and a second email at 14 days. It stops as soon as they finish their required requests, and it starts once per person per portal, so sending the invite again does not start it over. The day count, the wait, the wording and the number of emails are all yours: add another Wait and email, delete the second email, or switch it off. Reset puts both emails back.
Document expiring reminder. 30 days before a dated document on file expires.
Document expired reminder. 7 days after it expired, if nothing has replaced it.
Rejected upload reminder. 7 days after you rejected a file, if they have not sent a new one.
Time to ask again. 365 days after you approved a document that has no expiry date, asking for a fresh copy. It is for the police check, induction or policy sign-off that prints no date, so the expiry reminders can never see it. Approving the replacement starts the count again, so it repeats without a repeat setting.
Document approved. Tells them a file you approved is now on file.

Three email you, at your account address:

Invite not opened. Switched on. 3 days after an emailed invite, if the link has never been opened. That usually means a wrong address or a spam folder, so the useful move is to check the address and send again.
Upload not reviewed. 2 days after a file arrives, if you have not approved or rejected it.
Everyone has finished. The moment the last person on a portal finishes everything required.

Building your own

Click New automation, pick a trigger, then add actions. New automations start switched off; turn on Active (running) when the wording is right.

Five triggers fire the moment something happens:

Someone is added. You put somebody on a portal, which is when their link is created. Joining through a self-registration link does not fire it; Self-registration is the trigger for that.
Self-registration. Somebody joined through a self-registration link or QR code.
Requests completed. They finished everything required.
Document approved. You approved one of their uploads.
Everyone has finished. The last person on a portal finished.

Seven are checked once a day and carry a day count (0 to 720):

Requests not completed. A set number of days after their invite, if required items are still missing. It counts from the last time their link was emailed to them, or from when you added them if it never was.
Invite not opened. A set number of days after an emailed invite, if the link has never been opened. Sending the invite again restarts the count.
Upload not reviewed. A set number of days after a file arrives, if you have not approved or rejected it. The email links straight to that file, beside Approve and Reject.
Document expiring. A set number of days before a document on file expires.
Document expired. A set number of days after it expired, if nothing has replaced it.
Rejected upload not replaced. A set number of days after you rejected a file, if no replacement has arrived.
Time to ask again. A set number of days after you approved a document with no expiry date.

Your rules run alongside the system emails, with one exception: Requests not completed starts once per person per portal in total. The outstanding requests reminder is switched on and usually gets there first, and once it has started for somebody, a rule of yours on that trigger will not. To change the chase, edit the outstanding requests reminder itself: add a Wait and another email to send more, or delete one to send fewer.

How often a rule fires. Each action runs once per person per portal, and on the document triggers once per document. A person holding three dated certificates gets three separate chases, and replacing a file starts the chase again for the new one. To escalate on any other trigger, stack rules: expiring at 30 days and again at 7 is two automations.

When a rule stops. Every trigger checks again before each step, so a chase ends when its reason does:

Requests not completed stops the moment they finish. Invite not opened stops the moment they open the link.
On a closed portal, every chase that emails the person stops, because their link no longer works. Upload not reviewed still reminds you.
Document expiring and Document expired stop when the file is replaced, rejected, set to Ignore on the Requests screen, or loses its expiry date.
Rejected upload not replaced stops when a new file arrives or you approve the file after all.
Upload not reviewed stops when you approve or reject the file.
Document approved and Time to ask again stop if you withdraw the approval.
The document chases that email the person also stop when you archive the request.
Every chase except Upload not reviewed stops when you take the person off the portal.
Nothing sends while the rule is switched off or your account is deactivated.

What a rule can do

Up to 20 actions on one automation, in any order. The editor shows when each one runs relative to the trigger ("runs at the start", "day 3").

Email the person. Emails the person the rule fired for, with their private link. Sends straight away.
Send their invite. Sends the same invite as the Send button, in your Portal invite wording. It respects your email limits and the 5 minute gap between invites, and it restarts the clock for Invite not opened, and for Requests not completed until that reminder has started for them, which an ordinary email with their link does not.
Give them a section. Adds them to a section of requests you have limited to named people. See below.
Set their status. Moves their status on this portal and records it in their status history. It does not email them; add Email the person after it if they should know. Nothing happens if they already hold that status. You need at least one status set up before it offers any.
Send organizer email. Emails the Organizer contact set on the portal's form.
Send account email. Emails you, at your login address.
Email an address. Emails an address you type, such as a compliance inbox or a site manager who is not a user. This is the only internal email that counts toward your daily email limit and your monthly email allowance. When either is used up, nothing is sent and Recent activity shows why.
Create planner tasks. Turns a saved workflow into a task on the portal. See workflows and your procedures manual.
Wait. Pauses for 1 to 60 hours or days, then runs the actions below it. A wait needs at least one action after it.

Two triggers limit the choice. Upload not reviewed does not offer Email the person, because it reports on your queue, not theirs. Everyone has finished is about the whole group rather than one person, so it offers only the organizer, account and address emails and Create planner tasks.

Giving somebody a section

Set the section up first. On the portal, add a Section to its requests with the gated requests under it, open Limit who sees this, and leave the list of named people empty. The panel will say nobody can see it yet, which is correct.

Then add Give them a section to a rule and type the section's title. The field suggests the titles you already have. Put it above Send their invite, so the person opens a link that already carries their full pack.

It matches on the title, ignoring capitals. That is what lets one rule work on every portal with a "Drivers" section. Rename a section and you need to rename it in the rule too.
It only touches sections already limited to named people. A section everyone can see is left alone, and the run shows as skipped with the reason. Adding one person to an open section would hide it from everybody else.

Someone is added fires for everyone, so a rule like this needs a way to tell roles apart: run a portal per role, each with its own rule, or gate the section on an earlier answer ("What are you here as?") instead.

Writing the email

Subjects and bodies take tokens in square brackets, filled in for each send. The chips above the body show the ones this trigger supports. For the person: [first name], [name], [portal name], [business name], [outstanding items] and [their link]. [outstanding items] lists the required requests that person has not finished, one per line, worked out when the email is sent. It is what makes a reminder say what is left to do. [business name] is your display name from Profile, and reads "your organiser" when you have not set one, so set it before you send invites. The document triggers add [document name], [file name], [expiry date], [days until expiry] (such as "in 30 days") and [rejection reason]. On Time to ask again, leave out the expiry tokens: that trigger only fires on documents with no expiry date, so they would always be blank.

Attach a file adds files from your Files library to every run, such as an induction pack.

Preview shows the email with sample details filled in. Send test to me emails it to your account address with [Test] at the start of the subject.

Recent activity

Recent activity at the foot of the page lists the last 25 runs: when, which automation, which portal, what happened and a status of Sent, Done (tasks), Skipped or Failed, with the reason on the row. Start there when a rule seems not to have run, then see when an automation does not send. For every message that left your account, use Email tracking & log.

Automation examples for onboarding builds these into whole sequences.
Weekly summary email is a once-a-week digest of what is waiting on you, set up on its own screen.
Reports shows whether onboarding is moving.

Getting help

A wrong rule can email a lot of people at once. If you want a second pair of eyes on one before you switch it on, email [email protected].