Using a Workflow

What is a Workflow?

A Wrangle workflow is a way to manage recurring requests and business processes in Slack. For example, you might have a workflow for onboarding a new employee, or approving an equipment purchase.

Wrangle workflows can be customized for any recurring process that you want to manage in Slack, through our no-code Workflow Designer. Here's what it's like for one of your colleagues to use a Wrangle workflow you've created:

Start from Slack

Launch Wrangle

There are a few ways to start a Wrangle workflow in Slack

• Type "/wrangle" in any text field in Slack to find our "Start a Workflow with Wrangle" shortcut

• Open the Slack shortcut menu and search for "Wrangle" to find "Start a Workflow with Wrangle"

• Enter "Wrangle" in Slack's search bar to find "Start a Workflow"

• Click the "Start Workflow" button in the Wrangle Slack app

Pick a Workflow to Start

Once a user launches Wrangle, we'll populate a list of all the workflows available to that user, so they can pick which workflow they want to start (e.g. "Blog Post Publishing").

Choosing a workflow to start

You can also suggest a workflow to another user to give them a direct link to the workflow you want them to launch.

Fill Out the Intake Form

As soon as the user picks a workflow to start, they're presented with an intake form, because there's always data to collect to provide context for the rest of the workflow.

When you design your workflow's intake form, you specify which fields you want to collect from your users. Here's what an intake form might look like:

When you start a workflow in Wrangle, you first fill out the intake form.

If you try to start a workflow that requires uploading files as part of the intake form, you'll be redirected to start the workflow on the web. Slack's forms do not allow for uploading files.

Start from the Web

Workflow admins can also start a workflow from the web, either from the Workflows overview, or from a specific workflow dashboard:

Users can click "Start Workflow" under any workflow in this view.

Users can also click "Start Workflow" when viewing a specific workflow dashboard.

They'll then be prompted to fill out the intake form online, just like in Slack.

An example of an intake form on the web.

Workflow admins can also share a direct link to the intake form on the web with anyone in the workspace.

After the Intake Form has Been Submitted

Approval, Task List, and Form Steps

Once the intake form is submitted, Wrangle routes the request through a series of approvals, task list, and form steps in Slack. These steps are customizable for each workflow's use case.

For example, in a blog post publishing workflow, you might first route the draft post to a manager to review and approve in an approval step. Once approved, you might trigger a task list step to assign the post to get published onto the website and promoted on social media.

Approvals and task lists are posted to a thread in a Slack channel, so your team can make use of all of Slack's collaboration features. They'll get notified like any other message that @-mentions them, and they can chat with each other about the request in the Slack thread.

A workflow approval step posted to a channel.

Canceling an Instance

If for whatever reason an active workflow instance should be withdrawn, either the requester or a workflow admin can cancel it.

The requester or admin can click "Cancel Instance" at any stage of an active request.

Only in-progress instances can be canceled. Completed workflows will no longer have the "Cancel Instance" option available.

Closing the Loop at the End

As your approval and task list steps get completed, Wrangle will notify the original requester of the workflow's progress. Once all the steps are done, the workflow is done.

Video Demo: Using Wrangle Workflows

If you'd like to see what it's like to kick off a Wrangle workflow, check out this video demo.