Gloo Workflows allow you to create personalized pathways for your contacts! Each Workflow can be designed to send texts, add or remove people to/from Groups, send email notifications to your Gloo Team Members, and more.
Workflows can be triggered in one of two ways: people can either text in a keyword to activate the Workflow, or a Gloo Team Member can manually add them in to begin receiving the Workflow messages.
Let's walk through the steps of creating, managing, and analyzing your Workflows and the people who subscribe to them.
Creating a Workflow
Click on Workflows under Outbound, then click Create New.
To create a custom Workflow where you design all of the steps yourself, click Create from scratch. If you'd like to browse Gloo's library of Workflow Templates as a starting point, select Create from template instead.
Name your Workflow in the top left corner and enter at least one keyword to associate to the Workflow. This is the first step to any Workflow, and anytime someone texts one of the listed keywords into your Gloo phone number, it will automatically trigger the Workflow and add that person as a subscriber. Note that keywords are not case sensitive, but in order to trigger a Workflow, they must be texted in exactly and alone.
If, for example, you are configuring a Workflow to ask people about their interest in a church picnic and configure just a single "picnic" keyword, then only that word on its own will activate the workflow. "Picnik," "church picnic," or "I'm interested in the picnic" will not work. For this reason, it can often be a good idea to configure multiple versions of your keyword to try and catch more people who may text in something slightly different from what you told them to. You can configure as many options as you'd like, and even use whole sentences.
Now that you've created the keyword to trigger your Workflow, click the Plus Icon to begin adding steps.
Workflow Steps
The currently available steps to add to a Workflow in a free Gloo account are:
Send a text
Add or remove from Group
Email notification
Having a Gloo+ subscription grants access to 2 additional options:
Time delay
All steps can be configured multiple times within the same Workflow to accomplish different tasks, and there is no limit to how many steps your Workflow can be.
Send a Text
Choosing the Send a Text option means that your Workflow subscribers will receive a text at the specified day and time. Simply type out your message in the box, note how many messaging credits it will cost, and click Save. As with other features in Gloo, you can insert pictures, videos and emojis, personalize the message with recipients' names, add Memos, and shorten links by clicking the icons below.
Note that the first text configured in a workflow will always send immediately, as indicated on the left side. This cannot be changed, and is meant to help confirm to the contact that they have successfully opted into the Workflow.
When configuring additional Send a Text steps in your Workflow, you will be able to specify when you would like that message to be sent out. You can configure how many days later you'd like that text to be sent after the previous one, and set a specific time. The timezone you schedule these texts for will match the timezone you've configured in your Organization Settings.
Since people can text into a Workflow at any time, the general practice is to configure their texts to go out X days later, instead of, for example, "on Sunday." This ensures people receive messages in a timely way no matter when they activate the Workflow. If you'd like to configure Workflow texts to go out on very specific dates like December 1, jump down to the Time Delay section of this article- and remember that this step is only available to Gloo+ subscribers.
Important Note 1: The scheduled time for each message to go out is relative to the previous message, not to the beginning of the Workflow. For example, it you set it to "3 Days later" at 12pm, that message will go out 3 days after the previous message in the Workflow. So always make sure that you are not accidentally adding compounding delays by scheduling messages multiple days later, unless you intend for those messages to truly go out multiple days after the last text!
Important Note 2: Make sure to click Save on each individual Send a Text step before moving on! If you do not save each step, then when you exit the Workflow your message content will not be saved, but will be blank, and the Workflow will not be correctly sent.
Add or Remove From Group
Use this step to automatically add subscribers into an existing group in Gloo to make communication easy down the road. For example, if you use a Workflow to gather interest in a new Bible study, everyone who texts in can be added to a group that you can later send a Broadcast to with more information. If you'd like to add the subscriber to multiple groups, simply configure this step multiple times, and choose a different group each time.
One important thing to note is that the group must already exist for you to select it. If you need help creating a new group, you can find instructions here.
You can also use this step to remove the subscriber from a group instead. Simply choose the appropriate option when configuring the step.
Email Notification
Use this step to automatically trigger a notification email to go out to one of your Gloo Team Members to alert them that someone has subscribed to the Workflow, or reached a certain step in the Workflow. Simply select the team member (or multiple team members) from the dropdown that you would like to receive the notification email!
Note that even if this team member has their notification settings turned off, this will override those settings only for this specific instance, and send the email anyway.
Time Delay
Time Delay steps can be used to add time between each step to customize exactly when each will occur. It gives greater flexibility than the simple "X days later" option when using the Send a Text step. Time Delay steps are only available to Gloo+ members.
Rolling Time Delays
When setting up a Rolling Time Delay, you will choose how many days later, and at what time you want a step to be completed. This is very similar to the Send a Text step timing options, but can be applied to other types of steps as well. Maybe you want to send an email notification to a Gloo team member 2 days after someone completes step 5 of your Workflow. If you configure the Email Notification step right after step 5, it will be sent immediately, but adding a time delay before the Email Notification step ensures that email won't be sent until 2 days later.
Calendar Time Delays
When setting up a Calendar Time Delay, you can choose an exact date that you would like the message to be sent. This can be useful when you want all subscribers to receive the same content on the same day, regardless of when they first subscribed to the Workflow. Maybe you are doing an Advent devotional and want to ensure everyone receives the content on the second Sunday of Advent. Setting the Time Delay for that exact date and time ensures everyone receives the content on the correct day.
Note: Be cautious when using Calendar Time Delays. If you have set up a Workflow to send devotional texts every day of December, but someone subscribes on December 10, they will receive all of the previous texts at once to get them caught up in the Workflow and on the appropriate step.
Send Menu
The Send Menu option is complex and allows you to send out branching options for your contacts to go down within the same Workflow. We will not cover them in this article. For more information how to use Workflow Menus, check out this article!
Sample Workflow
To illustrate how some of these steps can fit together, let's walk through a sample Workflow setup. Maybe you'd like to invite new attendees of your church to receive a handful of texts for a week or two after they first attend, as well as add them to a group and make sure that your Connections pastor knows about them. Let's get to it!
Note: A templated version of a New Visitor Follow-Up Workflow can be found here if you don't want to create your own! But we'll go through the full process below anyway to illustrate how all of the different steps can fit together.
Click on Workflows under your Communications tab, then click Create New Workflow.
Click Create from scratch.
On this screen, let's first name our Workflow "New Attendees" and enter a keyword to associate to the Workflow. We'll follow our best practice here and add multiple keywords to try and account for the different things people will text in- "new," "new here," and "visitor". Remember that keywords are not case sensitive, but in order to trigger a Workflow, they must be texted in exactly and alone.
Now that we've created the keyword options to trigger your Workflow, click the Plus Icon to add a step.
For this Workflow, let's first send a text to welcome our guest. Type out the text you want someone to receive right away when they opt into your Workflow. Note all of the format options available - inserting images, emojis, videos, data, and Memos. Once you're finished, click Save.
Now that we've sent a first response to our guest, let's get them added to a group! If you haven't already done so, head over to People -> Groups and click + Create a Group.
Name your group and click Create.
Navigate back to your New Attendees Workflow and click on it to edit it. Underneath the first text we configured, click the Plus Icon to add a new step. Let's select Add or remove from group. Then set the Workflow to add them to the "New Attendees" group we just created. Now, any guests texting in the "new" keyword (or any of the other keywords options we configured) will automatically be added into a group for easy viewing and communications later!
Now our guest is in the Workflow and has been added to the group. But maybe we also want our Connections Pastor to be aware of them. No problem! Click that Plus Icon again to add a new step, and this time choose Email Notification. Select the Connections Pastor to set the Workflow to automatically send them an email notification any time a guest texts into the Workflow.
Note: If you haven't already added your Connections Pastor as a Gloo Team Member, check out this article for instructions!
Now that we've handled all of the administrative components, let's start building out more messages to go to our new attendee. Click the Plus Icon again and select Send a text to add a new message.
Let's type out a message to ask for some feedback. We can use the box on the left side to configure when that message will be sent out- we'll select one day later at noon. That way any guest who texts in the keyword on Sunday will receive the first text immediately, and this second text on Monday at noon. Or, if they attend Bible study on Wednesday and text in then, they'll receive the first text immediately and the second text on Thursday at noon! Once you have things the way you want, make sure to click Save.
Keep adding as many messages as you'd like! Note that if you want to duplicate a message for easier editing later, you can just click the copy icon on the right side. You can also use these icons to reorder or delete the steps in your Workflow.
You can add as many steps as you'd like. Make sure to set up your Workflows the way you like before people begin texting into them! If someone completes all steps in a Workflow and then you add more steps later, that contact will not receive the new steps.
Performance
When viewing any Workflow, click on the Performance tab to get key insights into how well your Workflow is performing. You can see things like how many people have subscribed to it, how many are in process, and how many have completed it for different, customizable timeframes.
Subscribers
Your contacts can opt into a Workflow at any time by texting in the correct keyword to trigger it. They will always start from the beginning of the Workflow and go through all steps if they subscribe in this way. However, if a Gloo Team Member manually adds a subscriber, you get a little more flexibility.
Manually Adding Subscribers
Gloo Team Members can also manually add contacts or whole groups into Workflows in the Subscribers tab. Any contact that is added to a Workflow will automatically begin going through those Workflow steps, no keyword required! And not only that, but the Gloo Team Member can add those subscribers into any step of the Workflow they choose, and not just enroll them from the beginning.
Navigate to Subscribers -> Add People.
When manually adding subscribers, they don't necessarily have to start from the beginning of the Workflow. Choose which Workflow step you would like these subscribers to be started from (it will default to the first step). Then choose the people or groups you'd like to add. You can add any combination of individuals and Groups, and the number displayed will add up how many total people are being added.
When you're ready, click Add X People.
Note: Are you trying to manually add someone to a Workflow, but are getting an error message that says "An error occurred in the Server Components Render?" Make sure your Workflow is toggled on! If a Workflow is not turned on, you will not be able to add people into it.
Subscriber Statuses
Under the Subscribers tab you can also view how many people have subscribed to your Workflow and how far along they are in going through it.
In Progress
This contact is actively going through the Workflow, and the step they are currently on is displayed. If someone opts into a Workflow and texts in the keyword a second time while still in progress, nothing new will happen- the system will disregard their second message and continue through the Workflow steps as normal.
Completed
This contact has gone through all of the steps of the Workflow. If someone is marked "Complete" and then texts in the keyword again, they will be re-enrolled and can go through the Workflow again.
Failed
This is a rare error that mainly occurs if you have a Send a Text step configured in your Workflow with no actual message configured. Contacts will fail on this step. If this occurs, you must add content to that step and have the contact text in the keyword again.
Resuming or Deleting Subscribers
Once someone has been subscribed to a Workflow (either by texting in a keyword or by being added by a Gloo Team Member), it is possible to change which step of the Workflow they are on, or remove them entirely from the Workflow.
In the screenshot below, this contact is on Step 6 out of 8 in the Workflow. In this particular Workflow, Step 6 is a time delay, meaning the contact is waiting to receive their next message. If you click the circular arrows icon, you can move this contact into a different step.
Simply choose the step you'd like to move them to from the dropdown list and click Resume Subscriber.
If you move a contact backwards in a Workflow, like taking them from Step 6 back to Step 2, they will go through all of those steps a second time. Texts and email notifications will be sent, time delays will be respected, etc.
If you move a contact forwards in a Workflow, they will not go through the steps you skipped. Texts and email notifications will not be sent, etc.
No matter which direction you move a contact in the Workflow, any step with a built-in delay (text 2 days later, etc), will still have that delay respected. So if you move a contact from Step 1 up to Step 5, but Step 5 is configured to be sent out "1 Day Later," the contact will not receive Step 5 immediately, but will wait 1 day, and then receive it.
Common Workflow Issues and Troubleshooting
Delays in Workflow Step Delivery: Like all messages sent from Gloo, there may be short delays of up to 20 minutes based on how many other people are messaging at the same time. However, if a contact does not receive a Workflow step for more than 20 minutes, you can reach out to our support team to help diagnose the issue.
Skipped or Out-of-Sequence Messages: Messages may skip days or arrive out of order if the workflow configuration is not set up correctly. Periodically check your Workflows to make sure everything is set up correctly- if using time delays, are they in the correct order? Has you contact already completed the Workflow and activated it a second time?