Workflows, Dashboard & Automation Events

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Automation Events

Automation Events offer a way to customize the behavior of Captivated by automatically performing specific actions when certain events take place. The easiest way to understand automation events is to use the following statement:

When a specific event occurs, automatically perform one or more actions.

Consider it an automatic, customizable cause-and-effect.

There are two parts to an automation event:

The Event is the cause: what specifically occurs to automate behavior.
The Action is the effect: what behavior occurs as the result of the event.

E.g. When a message is received containing competitor’s name (event), add Mike Manager to the conversation (action).

Examples of Events:

When a conversation is assigned to a user
When a conversation is queued or taken from a queue
When a conversation is completed
When a message is sent or received
When a message is sent or received containing “X”
When a payment request or form request is completed
When a custom button is clicked

Examples of Actions:

Send a message or template
Invite a user to the conversation
Transfer a conversation to a user or queue
Add a note to the conversation
Complete the conversation
Add or remove a tag from a contact
Send a webhook to a URL
Start, transition or end a Workflow (read more on Workflows)

*Note: Any of the actions listed above can be configured to trigger after X amount of time has elapsed.

There are MANY processes you can automate with Automation Events. Below are a few examples:

Auto-transferring or inviting to a subject matter expert person or queue based on a keyword – i.e. “When “Corvette” is mentioned, invite Corey the Corvette expert to the conversation.
Automatically send your address when the word “address” or “directions”, is mentioned within a text.
When a new trainee takes a conversation, automatically invite his or her supervisor to assist in the training.
When a note or message is sent containing @username, invite that user to the conversation automatically.
A phone tree type setup via text. E.g. “Reply 1 to check in, 2 for appointment scheduling, 3 for prescription refills.”
Adding customizable buttons above your message field to quickly queue up your favorite templates.

Workflows

In Captivated, workflows introduce the ability for conversations to be in customizable “states”. By default, Captivated only tracks two states of a conversation: it is either “active” or “complete”. Workflows allow you to attach your organization’s own unique states. For example, a hotel may have states as simple as “Checked In” and “Checked Out”, while an automotive service center may have many more states: the vehicle is checked in, the vehicle is being inspected, awaiting the customer’s approval of the inspection recommendations, completing the work, etc.

Tracking these isolated states of your organization’s processes may not be all that necessary or exciting. What makes Captivated’s workflows so powerful is that they work with automation events to provide simple, streamlined, and consistent processes for your users.

Here’s a quick video demonstrating a Check-in Workflow for a medical office:

Workflows Dashboard

“Current States” shows how many contacts are currently in each state of your workflow, enabling you to see where people are in your pipeline and address any points of congestion that need attention within your business’ processes. You can hover over a specific state with your mouse to view the actual number of contacts in that state. The “Current States” widget is represented in a bar graph without a date picker because it always shows what is currently happening.

The “Summary” widget shows how many contacts have entered and exited the workflow within the given time you specify in the date picker. The pie chart shows a breakdown of the workflow state a contact was in when they exited a workflow. You can hover over a specific state of the pie chart with your mouse to view the actual number of contacts that were in that state when they exited the workflow.

Filtering Conversations by Workflow State

Often, there may be many ongoing conversation threads in various stages of a workflow. This is when conversation filters become powerful. Use the “Advanced search” option to name and save custom searches. All saved searches can be found and edited below My Saved Searches.

In the example below, Pre-Paid Orders is saved as a filter in order to only view conversations in the “Pre-paid online” workflow state.

Workflow State Buttons

One of the most powerful features of Captivated’s workflow is that you can define buttons for your users within your states. A button is simply specified as an event: “when a button is clicked”. When a conversation has a workflow state that defines these events, the buttons will be presented on the screen.

Here’s an example: let’s say an automotive service center has a full workflow for their process. They may start the Automotive Service workflow when a customer checks in, but the service representatives will need to manually transition the workflow when the service on the vehicle starts and completes. A workflow can be set up so that the representative just needs to click buttons such as “Vehicle Service Started”, “Inspection Complete”, “Service Complete”. These actions can transition to the next states and even send messages to the customer. The user does not need to manually type a message or even manually select a template… the user simply clicks a pre-defined button that does what the account administrator has implemented. This streamlines the entire process and ensures the right steps are being followed and that the right communication is occurring

The possibilities with Automation Events and Workflows are endless! If you have an idea of something you’d like to accomplish, start a conversation with the Captivated Support team using the “Support” option in the left-hand menu. We’ll do our best to make it happen for you!