Somewhere between automatic and manual, there lies Productivity…

In SuiteCRM, with Workflows you can automatically react to an event. You can also have Workflows go over all your records in a certain module. Meanwhile, your users work on manually reviewing and actioning other things in the CRM.

When these manual things are laborious and repetitive, waste your Users’ time, and are prone to manual error, that’s when you feel the need for something more.

Workflows are a great way to define a sequence of actions to apply on a record, all from a graphical UI. If only it was easier to trigger them right there, on the spot, when looking at a record…

Workflows you can trigger manually from Views!

So, my sponsors on Github get access to this great add-on which will greatly increase the power of SuiteCRM. This will convert to happier users and saved money in your organization, in no time.

How It Works

You can watch the Demo Video (9 minutes, with sound). You’ll probably want to go full-screen to see it better.

While setting up a Workflow, you get a new option in the Run dropdown:

This marks the Workflow as something that will not be run when some scheduler runs, or when some record is changed, but rather when a user decides to run it on a record she has on the screen in front of her.

(Note that, counter-intuitively, Always won’t activate the Workflow buttons we’re describing here - you have to select the specific option as seen in the screenshot above.)

Run Workflows from the Detail view action buttons

In each record (any kind, including custom modules), you will get a new Action button called Run Workflows on the top. Here we show the menu as separate buttons, but it’s also there if your System Settings define it’s a dropdown menu instead.

Pressing that button will invoke all Workflows with these characteristics, on the current record:

• marked as Active
• applicable to the current module
• marked as From User Actions in Views in the Run dropdown
• the conditions on the Workflow evaluate to true for the current record

Run Workflows from any Sub-panel in Detail views

Also in the Detail view, when you scroll down to the subpanels area, you also get a new action button for each related record listed.

This is another great time-saver. You don’t even have to go into that related record to trigger the Workflows. You can do it directly as soon as you see it in any subpanel.

So, for example, you can be in a Contact and trigger an action on a related Case, or Task, etc.

Run Workflows from List views - more than one at once!

In the List Views you get an additional power. Since the Run Workflows option is placed inside the Bulk Actions menu, that means you can trigger Workflows for many records at once!

In this screenshot, you can see I have a Filter applied, then selected 3 specific records, then I’m launching the Workflows from the Bulk Actions dropdown.

The Filters function is powerful and combines very well with this add-on. You can use saved filters, combine several fields in the search, and then further drill down by selecting a few records manually. Remember the conditions inside the Workflow will also be taken into account, in case you prefer to filter from there.

Note that this is limited to the selected records visible on each list page. If you’re looking at a list view with 1,000 records, select all, and trigger the Workflows, they will only run for the 20 that are showing on the first page. Even with this restriction, be careful with performance - as you add too many records, it gets awkward to have the page waiting for 20 or 30 seconds while they execute. The mechanism needs to applied reasonably, especially with Workflows that take a long time!

Just imagine the possibilities! Select a bunch of records and have a Workflow create individual Calls for each of them. Or have a Workflow use a Calculated Field to update some field inside them with new information from a related record. Or send an email to those records, based on a template, without going into each record individually.

Some add-ons give you a single new feature. This one, by tapping in to the various possibilities of Workflows, gives you a myriad of new features; it multiplies the productivity of the CRM.

Technical Info

Check the Technical info page for details about Requirements, Releases, future features, etc.

Sponsor Now!

So, what are you waiting for?

me on Github and get access to this great SponsorWare add-on!

You will also effectively be contributing to the SuiteCRM project as a whole, by keeping me in the Community working to write code that will all eventually be donated into Core!

If enough people sponsor, we will effectively have one more developer working for SuiteCRM - that’s why I could be selling these add-ons in the SuiteCRM Store, for higher prices and forever, but I chose not to.