This article explains the Automations area in Personio. With this area, you can:

• Create automated workflows for repetitive tasks in Personio like On- and Offboarding, Approvals, Signature requests, and custom workflows based on your organization's needs. 
• Manage your existing workflows. 
• View the recent activity of workflows in Personio.

Access the Automations area

Employees can access up to three tabs within Automations: Overview, Workflows, and Activity. See below for the permissions each tab requires.

Note:
Only Administrators can see the Active signatures and Approval requests widgets in the Overview tab, and access approval-related actions or information. Non-Administrators cannot see approval-related items in the Activity or Workflows tabs. Employees with Custom Workflows permission (but without Automations Overview permission) can still access the Automations area, but will not see the Overview tab.

Overview tab

This tab has a dashboard that displays key information about your organization's employee lifecycle workflows, like Onboarding, Offboarding, Approval requests, and Electronic signature requests. You can configure these workflows in your account settings.

The dashboard helps you track the progress of these workflows, check each task's status, and identify any bottlenecks. Widgets appear in the dashboard based on user permissions, and each widget relates to a specific workflow. 

Note: 
The Overview tab does not show data for new, custom workflows you create with the workflow builder. To track these, use the Workflows and Activity tabs. 

Onboarding and offboarding widgets

These widgets show all the employees currently assigned to onboarding or offboarding paths. You can see the total number of active paths, and paths that are Overdue and On track. From these widgets, you can: 

• Monitor the progress of onboarding and offboarding workflows by clicking View all employees in on-/offboarding at the bottom of the relevant widget.
• Detect any delayed paths due to overdue steps, and contact the responsible employee for more information.
• Manage your onboarding and offboarding templates by clicking the gear icon in the top-right corner of the widget (visible only to admins).
• Add Marketplace integrations to your onboarding and offboarding workflows by clicking the lightning icon in the top-right corner of the widget. This enables you to automate certain processes like granting users access to tools.

Approval requests widget

Only Administrators can view the Open approval requests widget. Click an approval type to see a more detailed view of all the requests currently awaiting a decision, and the employees designated as approvers for each. From this widget, you can:

• Detect any overdue approval requests so you can contact the main approver to get further information.

See Manage approvals for more info.

Active signatures widget

This widget shows an overview of all open signature requests, for all employees. It includes the number of signed, declined, still pending, and unsuccessfully delivered signature requests due to an invalid email address. From this widget, you can:

• Detect any overdue signature requests and contact the signee to get further information, or quickly troubleshoot any failed signature requests.
• Access a more detailed view of all the open signature requests by clicking View all Signatures.
• Download the document containing an open signature by clicking the document name.
• Navigate to the signee's employee profile by clicking the signee name.
• Access the settings area to manage your document templates by clicking the gear icon located in the top-right corner (only visible to admins).
• Keep better track of all the signatures included in your Personio plan.

Only Administrators can view the Active signatures widget. If you're an Administrator and cannot see the widget, ensure your organization meets all the prerequisites. 

Workflows tab

The Workflows tab shows all the workflows created in the workflow builder, organized by trigger type. To see a specific type of workflow, click the category on the left. You can find key details like the number of workflows, their names, who created them, their status, and the number of executions. 

Click Create workflow to set up more custom workflows that fit your business needs.

You can activate, deactivate, copy, or delete the custom workflows you have created in this tab. See Monitor and manage workflows for more info.

If your organization uses approval workflows for employee data or attendances, Administrators can change the priority order of those workflows here. 

For time off approvals, select a time off type to change the priority order of the group-specific approval rules for that type.

Activity tab

After you create workflows, use the Activity tab to monitor your organization's workflow activity from the last 30 days. Select a workflow from the list to see details including when the workflow triggered, which employee is affected, and what steps are completed or still pending.

See Monitor and manage workflows for more information. 

The Activity tab does not include information about employee lifecycle workflows like Onboarding, Offboarding, or Electronic signatures. To monitor the progress of these workflows, go to Automations > Overview and click View all at the bottom of the relevant widget. 

Only Administrators can see activity related to approval workflows in this tab.

Reminders tab

The Reminders tab lets you view, create, and manage reminders for specific roles. Use the dropdown to select a role and see or edit that role’s reminders. For details, see the Create reminders article.

More information

To learn more about the Automations area, refer to the following resources:

• Create workflows
• Overview of approvals
• Manage approval processes
• Create reminders