Building Workflows

About Building Workflows

Workflows are used to trigger tasks based on events or on a repeating schedule. This page covers how to use the workflow editor to build a workflow.

See Workflows Basic Overview for a broad overview of workflows, their use cases, and how to manage workflows after they’ve been built.

The New Workflows Editor

The Workflows editor has been improved to enhance the way you build workflows. While the underlying workflows functionality remains the same, the new editor contains several improvements, including:

• A streamlined interface to help you build workflows quickly.
• The ability to pan and zoom to visualize your workflows more easily.

Navigating to the New Editor

You can access the new editor by clicking View new workflow editor while editing any workflow.

Once you’ve opted-in to the new editor, it will be your default experience moving forward. If desired, you can temporarily switch back to the old editor by clicking Return to old workflow editor.

Building a Workflow

1. In either the Workflows tab of your project, or the stand-alone workflow page, click Create a workflow.
2. Choose how you’d like to build your workflow:
   • Browse templates: Use a prebuilt workflow template. See Using Workflow Templates for more information.
   • Started when an event is received: Build a workflow from scratch that is triggered when a specific event occurs (for example, when a survey response is received or when a ticket’s status is changed). See Choosing an Event for more information about available events.
   • Started at a specific time (scheduled): Build a workflow from scratch that runs on a schedule that you set (for example, daily at 5:00 PM or on the first day of every month). See Setting a Workflow Schedule for help choosing a workflow schedule.
   • Extract, transform, and load (ETL) data: Build a workflow from scratch that extracts data from one place, transforms it if needed, and loads it into another place. See Building an ETL Workflow for more information about these types of workflow.
3. Depending on your selected workflow type, either configure the workflow’s event or set the workflow’s schedule.
4. If desired, you can rename your workflow by typing a new name in the top left corner of the workflow editor.
5. Below your workflow’s trigger, click the plus sign and choose the next component of the workflow:
   • Add a task: Add a task to your workflow, which is what you want to happen as a result of the event meeting the conditions. For example, sending an email, creating a ticket, distributing a survey, and more. See Defining Tasks for a list of available tasks.
   • Add a condition: Add conditions to your workflow, which are rules that must be met before the events that follow can execute. See Creating Conditions for more information.
     Qtip: It isn’t necessary to add conditions to every workflow. If there are no conditions, the workflow tasks will trigger as soon as the event takes place. For example, if your event is survey response creation, the workflow will fire every time a survey response is submitted.
6. You can add multiple conditions or tasks by repeating the previous step.
7. Once your workflow is finished, make sure it is toggled On.
   Qtip: As soon as you enable a workflow, it will be live. Workflows do not need to be published, so be careful when adding them to surveys that are actively collecting responses.
   Qtip: Workflows are not instantaneous and may take several minutes to an hour to start or complete.

Qtip: You can use the controls in the bottom left corner of the editor or the scroll wheel on your mouse to zoom in and out. You can also click and drag the editor to pan around to visualize your workflow.

Choosing an Event

“Events” occur in Qualtrics or other systems and cause a workflow to start. To create an event-based workflow, click Create a workflow and select Started when an event is received.

Then, you can choose the event you want to start the workflow. The selected event will determine what kinds of conditions can be applied to the workflow. You can use the search bar at the top of the window to easily find available events. The events available to you will depend on your license, permissions, and project type. See below for a brief explanation of each event type and visit the linked pages for step-by-step instructions on how to set up each specific task.

Events Available Everywhere

The events listed below are available to use in both the survey Workflows tab and the stand-alone Workflows page.

• Survey Response: Trigger the workflow based on how a respondent responds to your survey.
• Salesforce Outbound Message: Trigger the workflow based on Salesforce outbound messages.
  Qtip: This event is not available for EX projects.
• Ticket Event: Trigger the workflow based on ticket data
• Qtip: This event is not available for EX projects.
• JSON Event: Trigger the workflow based on an API call.
• ServiceNow Event: Trigger the workflow based on an event in ServiceNow.
• Zendesk Event: Trigger the workflow based on an event in Zendesk.
• Twilio Segment Event: Begin a workflow based on data events in Twilio Segment, update contact information in XM Directory based on Twilio Segment, or add transaction to an XM Directory contact based on events in Twilio Segment.
• Jira Event: Trigger workflows based on changes to Jira issues, such as status updates.
• XM Discover Event: Trigger a workflow based on verbatim alerts or scorecard alerts sent in XM Discover

Events Only Available in Stand-alone Workflows

The following events are only available when setting up an event-based workflow through the stand-alone Workflows page.

• API Usage Threshold Event: Trigger the workflow based on your license’s API usage.
• XM Directory Funnel Event: Trigger the workflow based on events that happen in your XM Directory.
• Survey Definition Event: Trigger the workflow based on a project’s status changing.
  Qtip: The survey definition event cannot be used for EX project types.
• iQ Anomaly Event: Trigger the workflow based on spikes or drops in survey response counts.
• Experience iD Change Event: Trigger workflows based on contact data changes, subscription changes, or transaction data changes.
• Experience iD Segments Event: Trigger a workflow based on whether a contact has been added to or removed from a segment.
• Health Connect Event: Trigger the workflow based on an event in your electronic health record system.

Setting a Workflow Schedule

Scheduled workflows allow you to create workflows that run at a specific time. You can set your workflow to run on a recurring basis, and you can choose when the workflow begins and ends.

To create a scheduled workflow, select Started at a specific time (scheduled) when creating your workflow.

Then choose your desired schedule frequency. This can be hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually, or a custom expression.
The next step will depend on your workflow’s frequency:

• Weekly and Monthly: Choose which days you would like it to run by clicking the drop-down and selecting the checkboxes next to each day.
  
  Qtip: If you choose a date that doesn’t exist in every month (ex: 29, 30, or 31), the workflow will not occur during those months.
• Quarterly: Choose which month of the quarter and day of the month the workflow should run.
  Qtip: If you want the workflow to run on the last day of the month, make sure to choose Last day.
• Annually: Choose the specific day of the year that the workflow should run.
• Custom Cron Expression: Enter a cron expression that represents when the workflow should run. Click Show details to view how your cron expression is evaluated. See this website for help generating a Cron expression.
  
  Qtip: Cron expressions can only have 5 parts and must contain valid characters. Intervals less than 1 hour are not allowed. See this guide to cron expressions for more information.
  Example: In the above screenshot, the scheduled workflow will run on the hour every 3 hours, starting at 1:00 AM, every 2 days.

Next, type in or click the drop-down to select the start time for your workflow.

If you would like the workflow to run multiple times on the same day, click Add a start time.

Example: Let’s say you want to execute your workflow 3 times per day. Set the frequency to daily, and add which 3 times in the day that you would like the workflow to run. This workflow will execute at 9AM, 12PM, and 3PM each day.

Next, select which time zone you want the workflow to run on. By default, the account’s time zone will be selected.

Then, choose when you want the workflow to start and stop running. By default, scheduled workflows will start running immediately after being activated and only stop running when deactivated. However, you can choose a start date and end date for your scheduled workflow instead.

1. Choose when the workflow Starts:
   • Immediately once activated: The workflow will run according to its schedule once it is toggled on.
   • On: The workflow will begin running on the chosen date. Either enter a date in MM/DD/YYYY format, or select a date from the calendar picker.
     
2. Choose when the workflow Ends:
   • Never: The workflow will run until toggled off.
   • After: The workflow will begin running on the chosen date. Either enter a date in MM/DD/YYYY format, or select a date from the calendar picker.

Manually triggering scheduled workflows

Rather than waiting for a scheduled workflow to fire, you can trigger it with the click of a button. In the workflow editor, you can immediately cause a workflow to fire during the testing process.

1. After creating your scheduled workflow, make sure it is toggled On.
2. Click the Run immediately button to test the scheduled workflow.

Creating Conditions

You can add conditions to your workflow so that they only run when certain criteria are met. Conditions can be added after an event in an event-based workflow, or after certain types of tasks. For example, you may not want to send an email to managers about every survey response, but you may want to let them know when a customer indicates low satisfaction.

Conditions are built by creating logic statements that use information from the chosen event or task:

1. When building the workflow, click the plus sign (+) and select Add a condition.
2. If your condition has multiple statements, choose how these statements should be evaluated:
   • All of the following are true: Think of this as all the statements in the condition being linked by “And.”
   • Any of the following are true: Think of this as all the statements in the condition being linked by “Or.”
3. Use the dropdown to choose what the condition should be based on. The options available here will depend on the workflow’s event or any preceding tasks. For example, if your workflow is based on survey responses, then your conditions can be based on question answers, embedded data, or quotas from that survey.
4. Select the field you’d like to use in the condition (e.g., Q1 – How would you rate the ease or difficulty of navigating this website?).
5. Choose the specific answer, response, value, etc. that you want to match (e.g., Extremely easy, Detractor, etc.).
6. Select the operator which determines how you want to match the value you choose (e.g., is selected / is not selected, is displayed / is not displayed, etc.).
   Qtip: See List of Operators for more information on available operators. Note that this page is about filtering response data, but the information on conditions is the same for workflows.
7. You can add multiple conditions by clicking the three dot menu and selecting Insert condition Below. Choose the Insert condition set below option to add a condition set instead, which is a new grouping of conditions that can be controlled by their own “any” or “all” setting.

Example: In this example, the workflow will trigger when these conditions are true:

• • If the respondent responds that they are “extremely dissatisfied” with the company.
    OR
  • If the respondent is from the EU region AND the quota for Europe, Middle East, and Africa has not been met.

You can include multiple condition blocks in a workflow. When the workflow runs, the workflow conditions and tasks will be evaluated in the order they appear in the workflow editor. Thus, the initial condition must be passed before being evaluated for the next condition. As soon as a condition is not met, the workflow will not continue evaluating following conditions.

Example: In this example, we are using a workflow to enter survey respondents into a raffle and then email raffle winners. Entrants are automatically identified when taking the survey, and we only want winners to receive an email.

1. The workflow begins when a respondent submits a survey response.
2. We add an initial condition to determine raffle eligibility. This happens when the respondent takes the survey, and is specified by the embedded data field “RaffleEntry” is “True”.
3. Next we add a code task, which uses JavaScript to randomly determine if the respondent won or lost the raffle.
4. We add another condition to determine if we need to send an email to a raffle winner. This condition is dependent on the output from the code task.
5. We add an email task to send an email to the respondent.

Defining Tasks

You can add up to 20 tasks per workflow to follow-up on your research and survey responses. Each task type is capable of solving an array of problems. You can use the search bar at the top to of the task selector to search your available tasks. For a full list of tasks, check out the Tasks category in the Workflows section of support site.

Qtip: Click the i icon on a task to get more information about the task. This window also includes a link to that specific task’s support page if you need guidance setting up the task.

General Workflows Tasks

The below tasks can be used across the Qualtrics platform.

• Tickets Task: NPS Detractors could trigger high-priority support tickets.
• Email Task: Student queries could trigger emails to instructors for help.
• Web Service Task: Newsfeeds could update in real time via APIs.
• XM Directory Task: Distribute a survey or update contact information in your XM Directory.
• Code Task: Use custom JavaScript to manipulate data that is passed between tasks.
• Notifications Feed Task: Create a notification as a result of the workflow.
• Calculate Metric Task: Trigger a response based on changes in aggregate metrics in your dataset.
• Frontline Feedback Task: Create a new request in your frontline feedback project based on a survey response.

Add-On Extension Tasks

• Slack Task: Achievement metrics could trigger Slack channel messages.
• Salesforce Task: Text analytics could launch Salesforce events.
• Zendesk Task: The Zendesk extension allows you to create and update tickets in Zendesk based on responses collected with Qualtrics surveys.
• Freshdesk Task: The Freshdesk extension allows you to create tickets in Freshdesk based on workflows triggered in Qualtrics.
• Hubspot Task: The Hubspot extension allows you to create and update deals and contacts in Hubspot from collected survey responses.
• ServiceNow Task: The ServiceNow extension allows you to create and update incidents in ServiceNow as well as update customer contact information provided by survey responses.
• Microsoft Dynamics: The Microsoft Dynamics extension allows you link up your account to a Qualtrics survey for both Response Mapping and Web to Lead capabilities.
• Tango Card Task: Incentivize surveys with Tango Card.
• Marketo Task: Send data to Marketo as a custom activity.

Sharing Credentials for Extension Tasks

If your task requires you to login with that extension’s credentials, the workflow owner must have at least read-only access to the account in order for the workflow to run successfully. Accounts set up by the Brand Administrator in the Extensions tab do not need to have their credentials shared.

1. Create an extension task.
   
2. Select your personal account.
3. Click Next.
4. Select Give the workflow owner read-only access to this account.
   
5. Click Continue task setup.
6. Finish configuring your task. Navigate to the task support pages for more information.

To remove the workflow owner’s access to your credentials:

1. Click on the task and navigate to the account selection menu. Typically, you’ll just click the back button.
2. Click the three-dot menu next to your account.
   
3. Select Manage Access.
4. Click Remove access.
   
   
5. Click Save.

ETL Workflows

ETL Workflows use data extracting and loading tasks to import data from a third-party source and import into Qualtrics. ETL workflows require you to use certain tasks with each other to complete your workflow. See Using Workflows Tasks to Build ETL Workflows for more information.

Using Workflow Templates

When creating a new workflow, you will have the option to use a Qualtrics template. These are pre-configured workflows designed to make setting up useful workflows easy. Workflow templates are created by our Qualtrics subject matter experts to leverage industry standards for workflow automations.

Example: The Import Salesforce data into XM Directory template combines an extract data from Salesforce task and a load B2B account data into XM Directory task in a guided setup to easily import data from Salesforce to save in your Qualtrics XM Directory.

Using Templates

1. From the workflow tab of a project or the stand-alone Workflows page, click Create a workflow and select Browse templates.
   
2. Templates will be listed below the “from scratch” section. There are many different workflows available based on various outcomes, so take the time to find the workflow that works best for your goals.
   
3. When you’ve found the template you want to use, click on it.
   
4. In the side panel, review the overview of the template. This will contain a general description of the workflow, what it’s best used for, how it helps your organization, and what’s included in the template.
5. When you’re ready to continue, click Get started.
6. You’ll be brought to a guided setup to configure the workflow. Use the Step-by-step instructions to help you set up the workflow. Visit the linked support pages in the instructions to learn more about each item in the workflow.
   
7. Click the different items of the workflow to configure each one.
   Qtip: Outstanding workflow steps will be highlighted.
8. When finished setting up the workflow, make sure to toggle it On.

Example Templates

Below are a few example templates. This is not an exhaustive list of available templates. Log into the platform to begin exploring all of the options available to you.

Qtip: Use the search at the top of the Catalog to find and search templates. You can search by keywords in the template. For example, search “ticket” to find all templates that use ticket tasks. You can also use the filter groups to display templates that meet certain criteria.

• Create a Qualtrics ticket for website or app support requests: This template uses a tickets task to create a Qualtrics ticket when a new survey response for support comes in on a website or app intercept.
  
• Get an email when NPS drops week-over-week: This template uses a calculate metric task to calculate your organization’s week-over-week NPS score, and sends an email if the score drops below a certain threshold you set.
  
• Import Salesforce data into XM Directory: This template combines an extract data from Salesforce task and a load B2B account data into XM Directory task in a guided setup to easily import data from Salesforce to save in your Qualtrics XM Directory.
  

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