One of the best parts of my job is talking to customers. I was just at a conference chatting with a lot of different churches about what was working in their Planning Center setup, and one feature kept coming up: workflows!I was surprised, but also not surprised. Workflows are one of the most powerful and free tools inside Planning Center People (our free database) that I want more of our customers need to know about. Did I mention it’s free?

If you’re not familiar, workflows let you track people's progress through a process. Think membership, volunteer onboarding, baptism interest, any time someone needs to move through a series of steps before something is considered done. You build that follow-up process once, tracking where each person is, Without having to hold the whole thing in your head.

What I love about workflows is that churches use them to make sure their people get the care they need. But until this year, every step in a workflow still needed a person to take action, including the ones that took zero thought. You still had to send templated emails, mark people who had already registered as complete, or manually move completed cards to the next step. We knew we could do better, so our team got to work.

Automatic workflow steps

Now, when you edit a workflow step you can click "Perform an action automatically." Choose from actions like sending an email, setting a custom field, or creating a follow-up task, and more. 

The moment a card arrives at that step, the action runs, it gets logged in the card history, and the card moves on. No one gets a notification asking them to do something a computer can do.

If something goes wrong, like the email template it's supposed to use got deleted, the card stays put and gets assigned to the backup assignee you chose in the step settings.

Three more automations for powerful workflows

Every ministry runs differently, so we built three more automations that work together for the needs of your church!

Skip conditions let you define which step applies to whom. Check "Skip this step in some conditions" and define your logic with the same conditions you use in People Lists. Someone who already registered for VBS bypasses the "Email registration details" step.

Overnight snooze lets you set your own unsnooze time and add after-hours rules like: "if a card comes in after 7 pm, snooze it until 8a m." Automatic actions are wonderful until your welcome email goes out at 11:40 pm because someone filled out a form from bed. 😴

Automations that complete a step push cards forward from the outside. If a step is just waiting on someone to register or submit a form, add an automation to that registration or form. When they do it, the card advances on its own or is removed from the workflow.

And all the admins overseeing volunteer onboarding workflow say amen.

What a membership workflow might look like

Here's a simple and smart membership example workflow using these automations.

Step 1: Send membership class info. Set this step to run automatically. The moment someone fills out your membership interest form, they’re added to the workflow, and step one emails them details and a link to register for your membership class. Auto snooze can hold it overnight so it sends at a good time.

Step 2: Wait for class registration. When they register, an automation from Registrations completes this step and moves the card forward.

Step 3: Wait for class completion. Once they check in to the event, they’re moved forward automatically.

Step 4: Mark them as a member. An automatic action can update custom fields your church has for membership.

Four steps. Minimal steps. No one falls through the cracks.

Check out this help article for more examples of common workflows.

Also new in workflows this year

Our People team has been busy this year making workflows better for our churches. Here’s a quick look at everything that’s shipped:

The goal of all of this: let workflows handle automatic actions, so your team can stay focused on the people on the other side of the cards.

Something else you wish you could automate? Tell us through the (?) icon in the top right corner of Planning Center. We want to keep making this better!