Workflows and Tasks

Workflows turn your production data into reminders. A rule says, in effect, "ten days before a batch is packaged, if the beer has no label, ask whoever manages this to upload one" — and every night the task engine works out which records that applies to and writes the tasks.

Those tasks then show up as columns on the Release Board, alongside the checks the board makes on its own.

Start from the Starter Library

Go to Settings → Workflows and open the Starter Library. It holds ready-made workflows for the three moments most breweries already coordinate around:

• Release Prep — label art, beer details, release info and packaging targets, counted back from the packaging date.
• Packaging Week — logging the run, and reconciling it against the plan.
• Release Day — the runway before a release goes public.

Each one is shown as the plain-English sentence of what it would do, before you add it. Added workflows arrive switched off and owned by roles rather than named people, so you can read them, change them and only then turn them on.

Everything a starter contains is an ordinary workflow afterwards. Edit it, delete templates from it, or add your own.

Workflow concepts

Workflows

A workflow is a named set of Task Templates, usually focused on one business process. Each workflow is also a board on the Release Board screen.

Task Templates

Task Templates define when and why tasks are created. Each template includes:

• Collection — the record type that drives task creation (batches, beers or orders).
• Reference date — the date field the rule counts from.
• Creation offset — days before or after the reference date to create the task.
• Overdue after — how many days later the task is marked overdue.
• Owners — people, roles, or a mix of both.
• Slack — optional direct messages when tasks are created.
• Conditions — filters on the triggering record.
• Related record checks — conditions on a linked record, for example the beer linked from a batch.

Templates can be dragged into whatever order makes sense; that order is the order their columns appear on the board.

Owners can be roles

Assigning a template to Anyone who can contribute or Managers and admins means the task goes to whoever holds that role on the night it is written. A rule owned by a role keeps working when the person who used to do the job changes. Roles are resolved when the task is created, so somebody who joins today inherits the rule from the next nightly run, not retroactively.

Conditions and presence

"Exists" and "Does not exist" ask whether there is actually something there. A field that was filled in and later cleared counts as absent, and so does an empty list — the same standard the Release Board applies when it calls a column incomplete. "Is empty" is narrower: it matches a field that was written and left empty, but not one that was never written at all.

Reading a rule before you trust it

Every template shows a sentence describing what it does, assembled from the rule itself rather than written by hand:

For every batch whose Dumped Date is not set, and only when its beer's Label is not set, create a task 21 days before its Packaging Start Date for managers and admins, going overdue 10 days later.

If that sentence does not say what you meant, the rule does not do what you meant.

Previewing what a rule would create

From a template's ⋮ menu, choose Preview What This Creates. This runs the real nightly evaluation against your own records and writes nothing.

• Across all records shows every record the rule currently matches, ignoring the creation window, so you see what the rule is about rather than only what it would do tonight.
• Test one record lets you pick a specific batch or beer and, if the rule would not fire for it, says why — no reference date, conditions not met, a task already there.

A rule that silently matches nothing is the most common way a workflow disappoints. This is how to find out before waiting a day.

Creating and managing workflows

1. Go to Settings → Workflows.
2. Add a workflow from the Starter Library, or create an empty one.
3. Add Task Templates, or edit the ones a starter brought.
4. Read each template's sentence, and preview anything you are unsure about.
5. Save, then switch the workflow on.

Task generation

Each day the task engine:

• Evaluates every enabled workflow template.
• Creates tasks whose scheduled dates fall within a rolling lookback window.
• Marks tasks overdue when they pass the configured age.
• Closes tasks whose records no longer meet the conditions.

Tasks are stored in the tasks collection and are visible in:

• My Tasks — for assigned users.
• All Tasks — for managers and admins.
• The Release Board — as a column per template.

Task completion

Users can complete their own tasks from the task pane or straight from a board cell. Managers and admins can complete any task. A task can also be snoozed to a date, which sets it aside without marking it done.

Slack notifications

If Slack is enabled on a template, assigned owners receive a direct message when a task is created, including links back to the relevant records. Users can opt out of Slack task notifications in their preferences.