How do you maintain your workflow events and triggers over time?

Maintaining workflow events and triggers over time, especially with tools like Power Automate, is all about staying on top of things. I regularly check in on my workflows using Power Automate's monitoring tools, making sure everything's running smoothly and nothing's falling through the cracks. Whenever there are changes in our processes or systems, I'm quick to update the workflows to keep them aligned. Power Automate makes it easy to tweak things as needed, and I keep a record of all changes to stay organized. Plus, I set up automated notifications to alert me of any issues, so I can address them promptly. It's a continuous cycle of monitoring, updating, and improving to keep our workflows running.

Another way to ensure real time feedback is to ask for it! Asking the people who use the workflows if everything is going smoothly and working as it should is the easiest way to find out if something wrong. Sometimes employees assume something changed because it was supposed to, but on the back end, something could have broke and it’s causing an unwanted effect. Asking preemptively if anything changed even if it’s small is a great way to figure out if things need to be adjusted.

Workflows are not set-and-forget. As a business grows, programs are bound to change—whether it's the pricing, contracts, services provided that may be explained in onboarding emails, program names, and so forth. Make it a habit to regularly audit your workflows. Do this not just for program changes, but also for potential software changes or integrations that may have changed, causing breaks in your workflow. An integration API may be out of date, a feature may have been disabled, or may have been put into legacy status and is no longer being optimized, etc.

For soloepreneurs or small business owners who work with a smaller number of clients a year, you will find it helpful to tweak and adjust your workflows each time you work with a client for at least the first handful of times you use the workflow. Even a slight change of what you send or when you send it can make a big difference on your efficiency or the user's experience. For those who use the workflows to manage a large number of leads or clients, consider setting a monthly or quarterly reminder to review your workflows to adjust language, what you send, or when you send it. Also make sure to adjust your workflows if your offering or deliverable change!

🔍 Identifying areas for improvement in your workflow is like finding hidden treasure! 🏴☠️ Prioritize changes by urgency, impact, and feasibility. 🚀 Eliminate unnecessary steps to streamline processes, automate repetitive tasks to save time, and add conditions or validations to ensure accuracy. 🛠️ Enhance user experience for smoother operations. Visualize your current and desired workflows with diagrams to spot opportunities. 📊 Remember, a well-mapped workflow is like a GPS for your business—guiding you to efficiency and success! 🌟 #WorkflowMagic #EfficiencyBoost

The easiest way to identify areas of improvement is by testing the workflow on yourself! Set up a test account and put yourself through the workflow. If it spans over days/weeks/months, trigger actions to launch so you can test it all in one go on the same day. If you are have invoices involved be sure to include a coupon code you can use so you don't have to pay yourself (it causes a cashflow and bookkeeping annoyance!).

Testing is not the most fun and it may be tempting to breeze through this step, but it is not to skip! It is critical to the success of your workflow. Imagine emails going out at the wrong time or messaging going out to the wrong client. You need to ensure everything is working as anticipated. Be sure to create your test account and test it on yourself before you use it with any leads or clients. Make sure to fill out any forms and review every email to catch typos or any other issues.

Ensuring everyone is on the same page when it comes to workflow and automations is essential. If you change your plan, pricing, and/or structure, that will heavily impact what triggers an automation, what is executed during the automation, and the overall customer experience. Workflows are not set-and-forget. While I would not recommend a chart or SOP because workflows can change intermittently, I would recommend a global communication and tracking program for any changes to processes to ensure all team members are aware and can update their aspect of the workflow accordingly. This could involve product pricing, the contract that is automatically sent, any post-purchase emails, etc.