The workflow builder

Every workflow starts with one trigger, followed by a chain of steps laid out top to bottom on the builder screen. Open an existing one from My Workflows on the Workflows dashboard, or press Create Workflow there to start blank.

​

Starting from nothing

Instead of an empty grid, a blank workflow opens with an AI prompt box. Type what you want in plain language — for example, “When a new lead comes in, send an email and assign a task” — or pick one of six suggestions, and Leaf360 builds the trigger and steps for you, showing its progress as it sets up each one and a summary of what it built when it’s done. The same assistant stays available afterward behind the sparkle icon in the header, so you can ask it to add a step, explain what a step does, or fix something instead of building by hand. You can just as easily skip all that and drag steps from the left sidebar onto the builder screen yourself.

​

Trigger, then steps

A workflow needs exactly one trigger before anything else can be added. The trigger picker groups by record type: Once you set a trigger, Leaf360 only shows you actions that match that trigger’s record type — so a loan workflow won’t offer you an action that only makes sense on a lead. Add a step by clicking the + below any existing step, or by dragging one from the sidebar onto the line connecting two steps. Steps in the middle of a straight chain can be dragged up or down to reorder; the trigger and anything inside a branch stay put.

​

What a step can do

A Send Email or Send SMS step can target the record itself, a person on the loan, or a specific team role, and can expand to reach a whole group of contacts or leads matching a filter instead of just one record.

​

Branching, delays and loops

If/Else splits on one condition; Router/Switch splits into as many named branches as you need, with an optional default path. Conditions compare a field to a value — equals, contains, starts with, is empty, greater than or equal, and similar comparisons — on any lead, loan, or contact field. Delay can wait a fixed duration, until a specific date, until a particular day and time, until a date stored on the record, or until a condition becomes true. Loop jumps back to an earlier step. The builder draws a visible box around the loop so you can see exactly what repeats. Set an optional Max Iterations to stop it from looping forever.

​

Configuring a step

Click any step to open its settings in the panel on the right. What you see depends on the step: a trigger shows its record type and, for status triggers, which specific statuses it fires on; a send action shows a template picker, recipient targeting, and a merge-variable browser; a condition shows its field, comparison, and value rows; a connector shows its own account and field mapping. Closing the panel or clicking elsewhere keeps whatever you set.

​

Saving, testing, and going live

The header shows the workflow’s name and a small status label (draft, active, or paused), plus this row of controls: Leaving with unsaved changes prompts you to save, discard, or cancel rather than losing them silently.

​

Testing before you activate

Test run needs a saved workflow, and gives you two starting points: Picking a real record still defaults to Dry run: the workflow simulates against that record’s real data, and no email, SMS, task, or field update actually happens. Switching to Live run is a separate, clearly marked choice, shown in red, that will actually fire everything in the workflow against that record — and a second confirmation box repeats the warning before anything sends. A live run also lets you override who the messages appear to send from, and optionally skip delay steps so you’re not waiting on a real timer to see the rest of the workflow run. A failed test names the step that failed, an explanation, and, where Leaf360 has one, a suggested fix.

​

If a step fails once it’s live

An action step that fails — a bad phone number or a provider error — is marked failed and the workflow moves on to the next step; it isn’t retried. A step that can’t run at all, most often a missing phone or email on the recipient, is marked skipped rather than failed, and the workflow still continues. A branching, delay, or data step that fails is different: since Leaf360 can’t know which path to take next, the entire run stops there. Every run’s step-by-step outcome — success, failed, or skipped — is visible afterward in Execution History.

​

Execution History

The clock icon opens a running list of this workflow’s own runs: status, whether it was a test, how long it took, and a breakdown of which steps succeeded, failed, or were skipped, with the specific error on any failure. A run that’s paused partway through — usually because it’s waiting on a response from an outside system — can be resumed from here.

​

Workflow settings

The gear icon opens description, category, and two behaviors that apply to the whole workflow rather than one step:

• When the client responds — a call or text reply from the record — you choose to keep the workflow running, pause it for that person, or stop it for that person outright.
• Stop when record leaves trigger status cancels the workflow for a record once its status no longer matches what the trigger originally fired on. This only applies to workflows triggered by a status change.

​

Common problems

​

Related

• Workflows and Automation
• Workflow Templates
• Email Templates
• SMS Templates
• Leaf360 Mortgage CRM