SD Workflows - Workflow Settings

Summary SD Workflows automate form-based business processes. The workflow settings control what happens after a form is submitted. This module covers turning on the workflow feature, setting up auto-responses, creating ticket titles, mapping forms to the right queues, and setting SLA timers that monitor service commitments. The outcome is a fully automated system that handles ticketing, notifications and escalations without manual intervention.

Steps

Introduction. PaT Forms are already highly advanced, far beyond tools like Google Forms. You can build powerful surveys, polls, inspections and application forms that adapt intelligently based on user responses, unlocking levels of data and insight previously out of reach to most companies. When you augment these forms with PaT Dashboards, PaT Workflows and the PaT Task Engine, you gain a level of business intelligence and automation no other platform offers. You can create world-class ticketing systems, unbreakable new customer and employee onboarding workflows, and fully automated compliance and audit trails that ensure nothing ever slips through the cracks again.

Turning on the workflow

Step 1

In the grey bar at the bottom of the SD, make sure Template is ticked. Until you also tick Global, beside it, the form is private to you only. When you are ready to publish the form, remember to come back and tick Global.

Step 2

Tick Workflow, to the right of Global in the same bar.

Step 3

Ticking Workflow turns the workflow switch on. While it is on, you can open the SD Workflow section under the SD's Advanced tab, and you can create time-based workflow actions. While it is off, the SD Workflow section can't be opened, and time-based actions don't run. If you try to open the SD Workflow section without the workflow switch on, a warning message tells you the feature isn't available unless you tick Workflow.

Step 4

Click Advanced, the second button in the row of grey buttons under the purple buttons. The SD's advanced menu opens down the left of the screen.

Step 5

In that menu, click SD Workflow, under SD Form Responses. The PaT Workflow Engine opens.

Step 6

The Workflow Engine opens on its Workflow Settings tab, at the Introduction section. Workflows are automated processes that you configure to control how PaT Forms (or tickets) move through your business. Think of them as smart rules that tell PaT what to do when different sections of a form are submitted: who gets notified, what tasks are created, who's responsible, and what happens next. Why use workflows? - No more manual follow-ups, which saves heaps of time. - Nothing falls through the cracks any more, which removes the cost, reputational damage and stress of people forgetting to do tasks. - Full compliance and visibility. Instead of paper, guesswork, and clunky forms built in Excel or Word that can't actually do anything, you set the instructions once, and PaT runs the process for you, every time. Use workflows to automate ticketing, onboarding and offboarding processes, leave applications and surveys that trigger actions, or to monitor when stages in a process slow down and alert the right people, so nothing gets stuck, delayed or forgotten.

Step 7

The Workflow Engine has 4 tabs, along the top of the page: \1. Workflow Settings: set how the form behaves after its initial submission, for example automate email responses, route forms automatically to chosen SDs, and set up timers that monitor activity, so you can do something if deadlines are missed. This module covers this tab. \2. Multi-Submit: design the full flow of your process and define post-submission actions, such as what you want PaT to do if a timer is missed or a button is clicked. \3. Task Dependancies (coming soon): control task order and dependencies. \4. Pat AI Agents (coming soon): let AI suggest or automate next steps.

Step 8

Down the left of the Workflow Settings tab is a list of sections: Introduction, Auto Respond, Title, Chat Summary, SD Mapping, SLA Mapping, Email Trigger and Dashboard Reporting. Click a section to open its settings. This is a reasonably advanced feature in PaT, so each section has detailed instructions to the right of its settings, to help you configure it.

The Workflow Settings sections

Step 9

Click Auto Respond to acknowledge form submissions instantly. When someone externally submits a form, it's best practice to send a quick confirmation email: this builds trust, manages expectations, and reassures them their form is being processed. To set it up, first choose the form field where you collected their email. In the Identity box, choose Custom under Select Identity. Then pick the field from the Identity Form Element drop-down list, which lists the form elements you created for the first section of your form, and click Apply. For example, if your form has an element called Customer email, choose it: its value fills the "send to" address of the email that PaT generates automatically.

Step 10

Next, in the Auto Respond box below, choose Active, write your confirmation message in Respond Contents, customising it as needed, and click Apply. Tip: resize the message box by dragging its bottom-right corner (the two diagonal lines).

Step 11

Click Title to build a clear form or ticket title. A strong title makes form submissions easy to identify and search. In the Title box, combine up to 3 form fields (for example name, category and priority) in Title Form Element 1 to 3, with custom separators such as spaces, dashes or pipes in the Spacer boxes, and click Apply. Check Display, below, shows how the title will look. The title identifies forms in different parts of the system: - as the title of the form's SD; - as data in a table, which can be viewed in a spreadsheet or used as a data source (an endpoint) for a chart on a dashboard; - in email subject lines and chat titles.

Note. Forms and tickets are the same thing; the name depends on the context. A form used in a ticketing system is commonly called a ticket, a form used for a job application is called a form, and a form used for a survey is often called a survey: they are all forms. In the same way, every form created makes its own SD by default, which PaT automatically injects into a parent SD. When that parent SD is part of a workflow where tickets are stored, it is called a queue.

Step 12

PaT generates a ticket number for each form automatically. To add a prefix and a suffix to it, use Ticket Number Prefix and Ticket Number Suffix in the Ticket Number box, under the Title box.

Step 13

Click Chat Summary to confirm the key form details you've collected and send them back in the first message (chat and email). When a form is submitted, PaT can automatically insert a summary of selected fields into the first message of the ticket's chat thread. This confirms what was entered, and sends the message back to the user for reference. Under Select Summary Data, choose All to pull through all the form fields the user has filled out, or Custom to choose which fields to include.

Step 14

Click SD Mapping to auto-direct tickets. Mapping ensures each form submission is automatically routed to the correct Strategy Document (SD), based on what the user selects or enters. For example, if the form captures an email ending in @xyz.com, you can map it to a VIP Customers SD; if the email is from a customer's domain and the selected country is AU, you can route it to an Australia CS Queue SD. You can map up to three fields, in Mapping Form Element 1 to 3: field 1 uses "like" logic, ideal for partial matches such as domain names, and fields 2 and 3 use exact matches (for example Country = AUS). If there's no match, PaT routes the form to a fallback SD: perfect as an overflow queue, to catch anything that doesn't meet a condition. Clear step-by-step instructions in the panel help you set it up.

Step 15

Click SLA Mapping to monitor your workflows with smart timers. Service Level Agreement (SLA) Mapping sets automated timers that watch over your workflows and trigger actions if service commitments aren't met. For example, your ticketing system's policy is to respond to all customer tickets within 60 minutes, with either a resolution or a time-bound update. With SLA Mapping, you can create a 60-minute timer to monitor the ticket's message thread. If no response is posted within that time, it triggers an automated action, such as assigning a follow-up task to a supervisor, sending a chat alert to the CS agent or team, or emailing the customer a friendly message that explains the delay, the escalation and the next steps, including a contact number if urgent. Whether you are pre-empting a breach or managing expectations, SLA Mapping protects your brand promise automatically.

Step 16

For example, set two timers: - A first response timer: if the agent doesn't respond within 60 minutes, PaT sends them a chat reminder, alerts their supervisor via PaT Chat, and emails the customer to acknowledge the delay. - A priority timer: the customer selects a priority level in the initial form, and you assign a timeframe to each priority, so PaT can monitor performance. If a tracked action (such as a chat, a form submission or a button click) doesn't happen before the timer expires, an alert is triggered. Later in the workflow, the agent grades how accurately the customer assigned the priority, which helps educate clients who always choose "urgent".

Step 17

Use the Email Response section (listed as Email Trigger) if you'd like your users to email you to get a link to the form. You give users an email address to send their issues to. When PaT receives an email there, it creates the shell of a form, assigns a ticket number, and bounces back an email with the ticket number and a link asking the user to fill out the form and provide more detail.

Step 18

The settings for your workflow are now configured. Next is the Multi-Submit tab, where you set up different actions based on who clicks the submit button and at which stage of the workflow they are. Its Flow of Actions flowchart updates live as you build the process, to help you visualise it. The SD Workflows - Multi Submit module covers it.