Workflows are the defined steps NowGo app users need to take to complete different kinds of work, such as onboarding packages or making a delivery. Workflows are highly configurable, and set up by the NowGo team in collaboration with the relevant team within your organisation. When you have a workflow set up, you can apply it to all or some users, depending on criteria you set.
Actions and outcomes
The different kinds of work that drivers using the mobile app can do are called actions. Actions can be things like making a delivery, picking up goods, or marking a cage for transfer.
Actions have defined outcomes that define how the action was resolved, either success or failure. Outcomes can be things like failed-delivery-no-one-home, or successful-pickup. These outcomes are then used for reporting, integrations, and triggering events like customer communications or channel alerts.
Workflows decide the steps app users need to take to perform the action, such as scanning some articles, capturing a signature or taking a photo, or entering a drop count. When a workflow is completed, the data captured in those steps are stored alongside the outcome.
💁 EXAMPLE: A job might have two stops: one with a pickup action, and one with a deliver action. The driver completes each action’s relevant workflow for each stop according to their workflow configuration. The pickup workflow might contain a barcode scan, and result in a pickup_success outcome, while the deliver workflow might require a captured signature, and result in a delivered_with_sig outcome. When the driver completes a workflow, a workflow completion stores the action, the outcome, and any other captured data, then closes out the workflow and marks the stop as complete. Note that not all workflows have to complete or interact with stops, you can also use them to just capture information.
Workflow configurations
Workflows are highly configurable in NowGo, and are set up by the NowGo team in collaboration with the relevant team in your organisation.
Workflows are used to capture information and track events taking place, and can be used to complete stops, capture operational work unrelated to planned stops, or even create new stops.
Workflow configurations contain all the defined workflows for a given user. When you have workflow configurations available, you can assign them to users or groups of users. This is useful for assigning specific workflows to warehouse staff, contractors, or drivers working in particular geographies. Some common examples are to enable offering new delivery options (such as authority to leave), having different workflows in different areas (like alcohol delivery requirements being different in different states), or the introduction of a new workflow to capture an additional operational process (such as scanning damaged goods in the warehouse).
💡NOTE: The workflow configuration platform is referred to as Thunder in some NowGo documentation.
The kinds of things you can include in a workflow are:
Custom information from a consignment, job, or stop to be shown to users, like an order number or special instructions
Whether article scanning is possible or required
A branching flowchart of data capture options to be stepped through after selecting a red failure or green success button, including:
Selecting pre-fabricated options (such as a list of failure to deliver reasons or proof of delivery type)
Free-text entry, dates, or barcodes
Capturing photos
Capturing a signature
Simple rules-based logic (for example, if an entered date is above or below a threshold, do this next)
Request a new or updated workflow
To create a new workflow, or to make changes to an already existing workflow, reach out to your account manager or our support team with a request. When we have the details of the changes you need, we can work with you to understand your business goals and determine what needs to change.
Depending on the scale of change, you might require a design workshop and a statement of work.
Test and roll out workflow changes
When you have new workflow configurations available, you can apply them to a set of drivers, channels, or all drivers using the app configuration settings in the NowGo dashboard.
We recommend that you keep your set of app configuration schemes as simple as possible by having a single pilot group of regular test users to trial changes with. If your organisation has different user sets with varying workflow needs, such as fleet-based, regional, or role differences, you can implement a pilot group for each set of users. When changes have been tested with your pilot group, you can then use the org default for rollout.
It is important to keep in mind that you can not partially apply workflow configurations. Each configuration contains all the workflows for that user. If you request several changes in a new workflow configuration, all those changes will be applied at once as that new configuration is applied. If you want to space out those changes, you will need to have several different configurations created, each with the cascading addition of changes.
Applying workflow changes
In the NowGo dashboard, click your email address in the top right corner, and select Settings.
In the App Configuration section, click Assign configuration schemes to open the workflow configuration list.
Select the scheme you want to apply, and click Edit.
Apply a workflow configuration to a set of individual drivers, drivers which have a certain default channel set. To apply to all drivers, edit the Org Default scheme.
Changes can take up to a few hours to update for online app users. Alternatively, app users can log out and back in, or go to their app settings and tap Force reload configuration to see the change immediately.
💡NOTE: It is good practice to make note of the configuration you are changing from, in case you want to roll back.