Dubsado Workflows - Expert Tips & Strategies

Workflows are the most advanced feature in Dubsado and it takes some practice and building and using them with several clients (or test clients) to have a better understanding of them and feel comfortable using them.

In this post, I’ll answer some questions I’ve received about workflows and share some tips to help you as you learn how to build, edit and use workflows in Dubsado.

Some of these questions are quite unique and specific and I haven’t found answers for some these questions in blog posts or videos - so if you’ve ever had these questions before hopefully this blog post will be helpful for you.

Tips to help you with Dubsado workflows

How do I start a workflow?

There are several ways to activate or start a workflow in Dubsado:

Start a Workflow using a lead capture form

You can connect a lead capture form to the workflow of your choice. There are two ways to do this:

1. Connect the lead capture form to a workflow: This option works if all your leads can use the same workflow.

Go to the lead capture form Settings → under Default Workflow select the workflow you’d like to connect this form to. 

Note: doing this means that everytime this form is filled out, it will trigger the selected workflow.

Start a workflow from a lead capture form - Option 1

2. Use a workflow element in the lead capture form: This option works if you want to use a different workflow depending on the answer that is selected.

Add a workflow element to your lead capture form. This will create a question with a dropdown answer in the form. 

Select the answer options for your leads to choose from and apply a workflow to each answer.

Start a workflow from a lead capture form - Option 2

Start a workflow using a public proposal

You can connect a workflow to a public proposal. For this to be possible go to the Form Settings and toggle on “Create new project once proposal is completed”.

This means that every time this proposal is submitted, Dubsado will create a new project.

Once toggled on, you can select the workflow you’d like to trigger when this proposal is submitted under Default Workflow

Start a workflow from a public proposal

Start a workflow manually

This allows you to choose which projects to apply a workflow to.

Open the project you’d like to apply a workflow to → go to Workflows tab → select the workflow you’d like to apply from the list and click Apply

Start a workflow manually

Note: once applied, you can edit a workflow inside a project without altering the workflow template. 

If certain steps in a workflow template do not apply to a particular project, you can remove them once you apply the workflow - as long as they do not happen immediately after the workflow starts.

How do I create a new workflow?

There are two ways to create a new workflow

• From scratch: In the workflow templates, click Add Workflow, add a name to the new workflow and start adding actions to it.

• Duplicate an existing workflow: Select the workflow you want to duplicate, and click the Copy icon. You can now edit the new workflow without altering the original.

How do I know which clients are in a workflow?

There is a way to check which clients are going through a workflow and which ones have completed it or have an issue. 

Go to your workflow template, click the gear icon ⚙️ on the right hand side and scroll to the bottom of the workflow. Then click View Workflow

You’ll see this chart that shows the project name and client name, it will show if their workflow is active, completed or paused. You’ll also see the details of every step in the workflow - if that step is completed, in progress, if it was deleted from that project or if it failed to run.

Workflow overview

What does ‘Update Project Workflows’ mean?

At the bottom of a workflow template is a button that says Update Project Workflows. 

Update project workflow

If you click this button you will get the following warning:

Warning when clicking update project workflow

It means that if you make updates / edits to your workflow and then click this button - those updates and edits will be applied to all projects that are currently using this workflow. It’s a way to bulk update / edit workflows. 

Note: this warning will always pop up - regardless of if there are any projects running this workflow or not.

Note: any new actions you’ve added to the workflow template will be added to the END of the workflow for projects that are running this workflow.

Note: any actions that are edited in a workflow - if they’ve been completed in a project, will not run again or change. 

It’s a nice feature to have, but you need to keep a very close track of what changes you’ve made to make sure that it makes sense to use this feature.

Tutorial: Dubsado Workflow Tips

In this video tutorial I’ll take you through some tips around Dubsado workflow. Learn how to start Dubsado workflows, how to create Dubsado workflows, how to know which clients are in a workflow, and answer the question what is Update Project Workflows?

Let’s work together!

Need help setting up Dubsado for your business? I can help you with a Done for you Dubsado setup. We’ll map out your desired client process so I can build it in Dubsado for you.

To learn more, book a free discovery call where we’ll talk about where you need help, and if it makes sense we can talk about what it’s like to work together.