Workflows in Freshsales allow you to automate actions as soon as an event trigger occurs or at a specific date/time. You can automatically update field properties, send email alerts, create follow-up tasks, and send notifications to third-party apps via webhooks.

Here’s how you can configure workflows:

1. Go to Admin Settings >  Manage Workflows. This opens the workflows page from where you can configure workflows. You can either opt to create a workflow or choose from the Workflow templates on this page. 

2. Click . This opens the page where you can configure a workflow from scratch.

You can choose between one of the following modules:

1. Leads

2. Contacts

3. Accounts

4. Deals

5. Tasks

6. Meetings

7. Call logs

4. Configuring your workflows consists of setting up three components:

1. Triggers

2. Conditions

3. Actions
   

• Triggers:
  Triggers define the frequency with which the workflow is to be activated for a record. Choose between triggers that run on a record when it is created or updated or run periodically— say monthly, weekly, or yearly. Similarly, you can also opt to run the workflows only once for the record or recurrently. Here are the triggers that are offered:
  

• Based on record action (Availability: Growth plan onwards)

  • When the record is created: The Workflow is executed only when the record is created.

  • When the record is created or updated: The Workflow is executed every single time the record is created or updated to modify the fields in the condition section.
    
    

• Based on date & time (Availability: Pro plan onwards)

  • Every Day: Workflow is executed daily at a specified time for all records.

  • Every Week: Workflow is executed weekly on a specified day of the week and at a specific time for all records.

  • Every Month: Workflow is executed weekly at a specified day of the week and at a specific time for all records

Choose the recurrence of the workflow on a specific record based on your business requirements. You can choose between one of two options:

• Once, for each record: This is best used when the update needs to be made only once to a field for the Lead. After the first update, this workflow will not be triggered for the lead even if the trigger conditions are met again.
  
  For example-  If the first touch point of contact is established, say through email or phone, then you can choose to change the Lead Stage to Contacted. Here, the lead stage needs to be changed only once during the entire lifecycle of the lead. Hence, ‘Once, for each record’ is used.
  
  

• Recurrently, for the same record: This option is better suited when a field update will need to be multiple times as and when trigger conditions are met.
  
  For example- Whenever an email is received from the lead, it is best to create a follow-up task for the sales rep. With recurring triggers, the workflow will be triggered every time an email is received from the lead. Hence, ‘Recurrently, for the same record’ is used.
  
  

• Conditions:
  With Conditions, you define the scenario when the workflow should be executed.
  Configure AND/OR blocks with nested conditions i.e., with various combinations of conditions.
  
  Use the Any or All toggle to define whether you want a few or all the conditions to be met for the workflow to be executed.
  
  In the case of our example, choose conditions such as industry or country, or business size to execute the workflow. You can also use condition groups to create more specific workflows.
  
  Lists the conditions to filter the records on which the actions are performed. Freshsales supports 10 conditions that can be added to a single group or across groups.

Condition groups

Freshsales allows you to create multiple blocks of conditions to enable targetted execution of the workflow.

• All or Any: You can use group together conditions as a block and opt whether you want the workflow to check whether any of the conditions are met or all of them are met. Use the toggle to set for All or Any.
  
  

• AND/OR: Select AND/OR between condition groups to decide whether you want the workflow to be triggered only when All condition groups are fulfilled or any one of them is fulfilled.
  
  

  Note: You can only add use either an AND or an OR operator between all condition groups. You will not be able to use both at the same time. I.e if you select AND between one condition group, then for all subsequent condition groups you can only use AND.

  
  
  

• Actions: Finally, configure actions that should be executed when the conditions of your workflow are met. Choose from an array of actions that should be performed— create tasks, send emails/SMSs, reminders, etc., and automate monotonous manual tasks. You can also configure the workflow to create deals automatically based on conditions.
  
  Lists the automated actions to be performed on the record. A maximum of 5 actions can be added to a workflow. The actions we provide are:

  • Update Records 

  • Update Primary Account

  • Update all related deals

  • Update all related accounts

  • Trigger webhooks

  • Send email to sales owner

  • Send email to lead

  • Add task

  • Add Deal

  • Send SMS to Owner

  • Send SMS to All related leads

  • Send email to All related leads

  • Add Tag

  • Remove Tag

  • Add Contact/Account/ Deal team

  • Add to list 

  • Remove from list

  • Send email to all attendees (applicable when 'appointments' are chosen)
    
    

Actions supported by Freshsales Workflows

*Updating Records
When updating records using Workflows, you can opt between one of 4 options. Let’s consider an example. Say you would like to change the contract renewal date for a lead. When you select Update record and select the contract renewal date field, you can update it one of four ways:

• Fixed Value: Select from a set of fixed values or available values. For example, configure a very specific date like 31/3/2023 to update the contract renewal date for all such fields to the particular date.
  
  
  

• Reference Value: The field can be mapped with a value from another field. For example, if you want to update the contract expiry date based on the trial/subscription expiry date, you can map the contract renewal date field to the subscription expiry date field.
  
  
  

• Relative Value: Updating the field to a value using the existing field value as a reference.
  
  For example, use the contract renewal date as a reference and update the date field by a week or a month.
  
  
  

• Add or Subtract Value: Updating the field to a value using the existing field value as a reference and updating it numerically.
  
  For example, you can choose to use the contract renewal date as a reference and update the date field by 15 days.
  

Workflow execution order

The actions are performed immediately when the workflow is executed. 

If multiple workflows are triggered at the same point, these are executed in the order of the list they are present. The top workflow will be executed first and the bottom-most workflow will be executed at the end. 

You can reorder the workflows in the list view to change the sequence. To prevent the workflows to go in an infinite loop, the sequence of workflows triggered will stop with the list from top to bottom. That is, the last workflow will not trigger the first workflow again.

Limits: The maximum number of workflows differs based on the plan you are in.