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

• Create automated workflows for repetitive tasks in Personio like Onboarding and Offboarding, Approvals, Signature requests, and custom workflows based on your organization's needs. 
• Manage your existing workflows and approvals. 
• View the activity history of workflows and approvals.
• Create and manage reminders for employee roles.

Access the Automations area

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

Note:
Employees with permission for Custom Workflows > Creating and managing Workflows but without permission for Automations Overview can still access the Automations area but cannot 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 custom workflows you create with the workflow builder. Use the Workflows and Activity tabs to track this information. 

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 with Overdue and On track statuses. From these widgets, you can: 

• Click View all employees in on-/offboarding at the bottom of the widget to monitor the progress of onboarding and offboarding workflows.
• Detect any delayed paths due to overdue steps, and contact the responsible employee for more information.
• Click the gear icon to manage your onboarding and offboarding templates.
• Click the lightning icon to add Marketplace integrations to your onboarding and offboarding workflows. 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. They can use it to identify overdue approval requests by approval type. Click an approval type to move to the Activity tab and see a list of approval requests of that type. Select an instance from the list to review its details. 

See Manage approvals for more info.

Active signatures widget

Only Administrators can view the 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 overdue signature requests and contact the signee to get further information or quickly troubleshoot any failed signature requests.
• Click View all signatures to access a more detailed view of all the open signature requests.
• Click a document's name to download the document containing an open signature.
• Click the signee's name to open their employee profile.
• Click the gear icon to manage your document templates.
• Keep better track of all the signatures included in your Personio plan.

If you're an Administrator and cannot see the widget, ensure your organization meets all the requirements. 

Workflows tab

The Workflows tab shows all the workflows created in the workflow builder, organized by trigger type. In this tab, you can: 

• Click a category on the left to see a specific type of workflow. 
• 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.
• 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 changes or attendance, 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 and approvals, use the Activity tab to monitor your organization's workflow and approval activity. For users with permissions, the tab has two views: Workflows and Approvals. Switch between them using the toggle at the top. 

• In the Workflows view, select a workflow execution from the list to see details including the triggering event, the affected employee, assignees, and a timeline of completed and pending steps.
• In the Approvals view, select an approval from the list to see its request details and a timeline of each approval step. 
• Use the Filter options to refine the results in the table. Adjust the date range to see executions within a specific timeframe. Click Views to save a filter and sort combination you use often.

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. 

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
• Monitor and manage workflows
• Overview of approvals
• Manage approval processes
• Create reminders