This article provides a summary of workflow components in Personio. Workflows consist of the following components: 

• Trigger: the event that causes a workflow to start.
• Rules and conditions: filters that set the requirements for a workflow to run. Once a trigger happens, the workflow only continues if the specific conditions are met. This provides more control and ensures workflows run in specific instances, not just when the trigger happens.
• Actions: the steps that happen once the trigger and rules and conditions are met. 

These components automate tasks and help you work more efficiently in Personio. You can customize them to create workflows specific to your needs.

Triggers

Workflows always start with a trigger. Triggers prompt the automation to begin, and subsequent actions follow. There are many types of triggers, explained below.

Time-based trigger

Time-based triggers start an automation on a set date, time, and frequency. There are two main types:

• Scheduled: the automation begins on a specific date, like sending monthly reminders to employees about performance reviews or surveys.
• Relative to a date: the automation begins in relation to another date, like a time off start date or an employee's hire date. Choose whether it starts on the date or a certain number of days before or after the date.

Optionally, add rules and conditions to specify criteria related to time off types, employee types, statuses, and more.  

Tip:
When scheduling triggers for specific times, note that the feature works based on the UTC. The first half of the day is 09:00 am UTC, and the second half of the day is 01:00 pm UTC. 

Event-based trigger

Event-based triggers start an automation when a specific event occurs in Personio. Select an event-based trigger by type:

• Attendance and time off: triggered by attendance or time off events, like when an employee's total time off days exceed a set limit. 
• Approvable events: triggered by approval-related actions, like when an employee submits and attendance or changes to employee data.
  Note: This trigger type only appears for customers who have been transitioned to the Approvals in Automations experience. 
• Documents: triggered by document-related events, like when a document is uploaded, created from a template, or a document signature status is updated.
• Employee events: triggered by changes related to employees. For example, when a new employee is created or when an employee's information is updated, like their department or supervisor changes. 

Add rules and conditions to define which employees the automation affects. For example, set the automation to trigger only when employees from certain workplaces are created or when a document is uploaded to a specific category.

Rules and conditions

Rules and conditions give you more control over when event-based and time-based workflows run. Use them to ensure an automation only runs when specific criteria are met, not just when the trigger event occurs. They help you to decide exactly when a workflow should trigger and who it should impact. 

Rules

• Add rules to event-based or date-related triggers to filter who the workflow affects. 
• Create rules based on preset and custom attributes, or for quantity-related data. 
• If you add multiple rules, the workflow only triggers once all are met.

Conditions

• Add conditions to event-based triggers to define the criteria an event must meet before triggering a workflow.
• If you add multiple conditions, you can choose if the workflow should trigger once it matches any of the conditions or only when it matches all the conditions.

Example rules and conditions for triggers

Actions

After you create a trigger, you can add actions. Actions are the steps the workflow follows once it starts. The main actions are: Assign a task, Send a notification, Send an email, and Add a participant. Be sure to add actions in the order you want them to happen. There are two types of actions:

• Synchronous actions (like tasks) have a blocking behavior. They must be completed before the next step in the workflow can begin. For example, if you add a task before an email in a workflow sequence, the email will only send after the assigned user completes the task. 
• Asynchronous actions (like notifications, emails, or adding participants) happen at the same time as other asynchronous steps in a workflow sequence. They don't depend on other actions to finish before they can begin. For example, if you add a notification before an email in a workflow sequence, both will send to users at the same time once the workflow starts. 

You can use several variables when adding your workflow actions, but you can't create personalized ones. 

Note:
If an asynchronous action comes after a task, it only triggers once the task is completed. 

Assign a task

Assigning tasks to a specific person or role can help streamline processes. Tasks triggered by an automation appear in the assignee's Personio Inbox. When adding a task to a workflow, you can define the following info:

An assignee: choose the specific person or role that gets the task. Before adding assignees, ensure they have the necessary permissions to perform the task. If you assign multiple employees or roles to the same task, only one needs to mark it as complete and the task disappears for everyone else. 

If you want an individual employee or role to do their own task, add a separate task for each of them. Be sure to add the tasks in order they need to be done. 

A message: provide assignees with details about the task. Use variables to mention specific employees in the message and provide additional context like document names. Or, insert links that may provide additional info.

Tasks occur synchronously. Any steps that come after a task will only start when one of the assigned users completes it. You can see which steps have happened and what step the workflow is currently at by checking the Activity tab. 

Notification

Send updates about a workflow to a user's Personio Inbox to help keep users informed. To receive workflow-related notifications, users must have "Other" activated in their personal notification settings. Here, recipients can also choose to receive email updates. Notifications must include the following info:

Recipients: select the people or roles to receive the notification. Before adding recipients, ensure they have the necessary permissions for the data related to the notification.

A title: provide context about the notification.

A message: provides recipients with details about the update. Use variables to mention specific employees and provide additional context.

Notifications occur asynchronously and trigger at the same time as the following actions. Monitor a workflow's progress via the Activity tab.

Send an email

Emailing a specific person or role can help personalize the employee experience, or keep employees informed outside of Personio. Email actions require:

Recipients: select the people or roles from the dropdown menu. You can include external email addresses by typing them in to the recipients box manually.

(Optional) Cc, Bcc, Reply-to

The email subject: add a brief description.

The email body text: use rich text formatting and links. Add variables like the title of the workflow, the affected person, or the supervisor of the affected person to provide more context.

Emails occur asynchronously. They trigger at the same time as the next action. Monitor a workflow's progress via the Activity tab.

Note:
Workflow emails can go to a maximum of 45 recipients, including Cc and Bcc. If your list is larger, Personio automatically splits it into smaller groups so everyone receives the email. 

Add a survey participant

Adding a participant to a survey can help automate the collection of employee feedback. This action requires you to pick the survey the employee should be assigned. Make sure you have already created the survey before adding this step to a workflow.

Adding a participant occurs asynchronously and trigger at the same time as following actions.

Use cases

Examples

• Set a time-off-related workflow for specific time off types, like sick leave or parental leave.
• Create a document-related workflow triggered by specific document categories, like work visas. Tailor the workflow even more depending on an employee's workplace or country of employment.
• Notify relevant employees when a document's signature status changes from Pending to Signed.