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.

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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 go ahead and pick one of six suggestions. Leaf360 builds the trigger and the steps for you, showing its progress as it goes, then 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.

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Trigger, then steps

A workflow needs exactly one trigger before anything else can be added. The trigger picker groups by record type: How many times you’ve reached out is a trigger too. Contact attempts, along with the running totals of calls, texts and emails on a record, can each start a workflow. Let’s say you want a lead dropped into your open pool after nine contact attempts with nothing back, that’s the trigger you’d build it on. 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.

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What a step can do

To change a lead’s status, or a loan’s status or stage, go ahead and use Update Lead or Update Loan, not Update Field. Those two keep status and stage in step with each other, run your company’s stage checks, and write the change to the record’s history. That’s why Lead Status and Loan Status or Stage aren’t in the Update Field list anymore. An older Update Field step that still points at one of them shows an amber warning in the builder and gets skipped when the workflow runs, so make sure you swap it for Update Lead or Update Loan. A Send Email or Send SMS step can target the record itself, a person on the loan, or a specific team role. It can also expand to a whole group of contacts or leads matching a filter, so that way one step covers a list instead of a single record.

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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. A checkbox custom field that’s unchecked counts as false, and so does one that’s blank, so that way an “is false” check catches both. 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.

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Setting up 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 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Archived records don’t run workflows

An archived lead or loan won’t start a workflow, whichever way it would’ve started: a trigger, a date, a manual start, a list enrollment, another workflow, or a delay picking back up. Try to start one by hand and Leaf360 tells you the record’s archived and to restore it first. See Archive Pipeline.

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Common problems

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Related

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