Progressions & Actions

Create your business flow, defining how to pass successfully from one status to the next, and add actions to fully automate how you run your business processes. Before moving to Progressions, it’s important to have an understanding of our Statuses. Using the business process configuration screen, you can review the progressions for each of your Module types, and add new Progressions and Actions to it.

Using this guide, you can:

• Understand Progressions and Actions

• Create a Progression

• Create Progression Actions

• Reorder Status Progressions

• Delete a Progression if it’s no longer useful

• Create Update Field Actions

• Create Upload File Actions

• Create Activity Actions

• Create Task Actions

• Create Special Process Actions for different Modules

Why use Progressions and Actions

If you're familiar with the concept of a flow chart, each status is like a box in a flow chart, and the progressions are the lines that join the boxes together. By nominating a starting and ending status, you're able to provide your users with a clear business process to follow, improving consistency and coordination across your team.

On each progression, you can configure what we call actions - things that happen, like asking the user to enter some information into a field, or upload a file, create a task, send an email to another user, or invoice. By combining Progressions and Actions, Accelo makes it easier for your team to move your business forward, whether it's a deal closer to win or a project closer to generating revenue. 

Outside of configuration, you'll find Status Progressions towards the top of each module view screen as a Status bar.  

How to Create Status Progression

To create a Progression, click on the New Progression button at the bottom of the Status Progressions workflow table. 

Enter the following details to set up your progression:

• Icon: For easy skim value for the type of action. For example, creating a new sale is often associated with the "create new" icon. 

• Title: This will be the name of the Progression. It defaults to the name of the To Status, but it can be named as something separately.

• Progress % (Sales Only): How far along is the sale or rather, what percent of deals close from this status. This percent can factor into forecast reporting. 

• From Status - What status the progression is coming from. To populate this status, drag and drop a status from the Statuses area below into the From Status Box. 

  • Any: This means that ANY Status can progress to the defined To Status. For example, you might want to put a status of Paused in the To Status field for this option, because you want to be able to pause an object no matter what status it is in.
  • On Create: This means that when the object is created, it can move to the defined To Status. For example, you may want to put a status of Open in the defined To Status field in this option, because you want to make sure items you just created can be opened.
  • Specified: This means that only the defined Specified Status can progress to the defined To Status.

• To Status: The status you’re progressing to. To populate this status, drag and drop a status from the Statuses area below into the To Status Box. Often, it is further along the process - e.g., Month 1 to Month 2. Sometimes, though, it can move the flow backwards such as "On Hold" or "Returned to Account Manager." 

Create Progression Actions

Now that we've created the structure of the flow-chart - the boxes (Statuses) and the lines (Progressions) - we can define what actions your team needs to take between progressions. These are called Actions. 

Progression Actions are an important part of automating your business process. Actions are the things that happen, like asking the user to enter some information into a field, or upload a file, create a task or send an email to another user. For example, you can set it so that when you Close an Issue that you will automatically send out an email to notify the Client that the work is finished, and also go to the Approval screen to bill for the work tied to it.

How flexible you want your Progression Actions are up to you, as you have the option to make them required, or even hidden from view as your statuses change.

NOTE: any progression actions set up within status progressions will progress within the following order by action type: Field (first) > File > Activity > Task > Special (last). Additionally, please also note that Webhooks are processed after Activities and are sent out before Special Processes.

Types of Actions

You’ll typically have five types of Actions to add to a Progression:

• Update Field: You can update default and Custom Profile fields such as Due date, Value, Reason for on Hold, or Project Lead Name. 

  • Object: Filters the available fields for updating so that you can edit fields outside of the module you are current moving the status on. 
  • Field: The field you want the team member to fill out. 
  • Alternative Title: What you want users to see the title as. For example, you may want to use the comments section to record information about why they are interested in your services. You would put the title as "Why Interested?" even though it's still the comment field. 
  • Default Value: The value you want to be there when moving through the progression. It will relate to the field you choose. 
  • Required: Yes - The team member can't move the status without filling the field out. No- The field comes up on the progression as a suggestion/ reminder to fill out. 
  • Hidden: Yes - When a progression moves, the action runs in the background without the user able to see it happening. Commonly used for recording metrics like date moved or sending out internal status updates. No - action prompts the team member to make edits to it such as a templated email on close of a ticket that team members like to personalize. 

• Upload File: You can prompt a file to be uploaded through a manual upload or link to a document service such as Google Drive, Dropbox, or Box

• Create Activity: Prompt to create an Activity, based on a template which you create.  Includes both internal notes as well as client-facing emails-. 

• Create Task: You can define a templated Task, or just create a new one.

• Special Process: There’s a variety of special processes available

  • Approval screen
  • marking all related Tasks as complete with Work Done.
    
    

 Actions options

• Required / Hidden 
  
  
  

Other things

Other fields

• Workflow required - Project progressions allow you to select if a workflow is required on the project before this progression may be run. If you would like to know more about the project workflow, please see Milestones & Tasks.

• Progress - Sales progressions allow you to set a progress level. This means when this progression is run for a sale, the sale progress value will be updated (this makes up part of the thermometer statistics).

Reorder Progressions

To re-order your status progressions, click and drag each progression box one-at-a-time on the left of the progression.

Delete Progressions/Actions

Before removing the progression, you should consider whether this will cause problems with any records that are currently using that progression. E.g. if I have some issues in the Submitted status and I delete my Submitted > Open progression, then I may have no way to open my issues.

To remove an Action, click the Action Expand button to show all related actions associated with the status progression. You can remove by clicking the recycle bin icon next to each action.

To delete Progressions, simply click on the recycle bin icon on the right of the Progression. Note that doing so will also delete all actions underneath it.