Best practice guide: How to Design Workflows in Build Concierge

Overview of the Workflow Builder

The Workflow Builder is a no-code visual tool designed to automate and simplify your workflows relating to the way you manage customer interactions. It allows you to remove manual work, reducing mistakes and omissions caused by human errors.

Before you jump in, it’s important to understand what a workflow is, and how to define and visualise your current processes in order to transform them into the Workflow Builder seamlessly.

What is a Workflow?

A Workflow can be either a project or a process.

A process workflow is a repeatable sequence of steps that runs the same way every time. Process workflows are ongoing, standardized, and designed for consistency (e.g., creating a new customer contact, sending an autoreply email, logging a job in BigChange).

A project workflow is a sequence of steps that guides the completion of a one-time or unique initiative, such as delivering a customer project or job. Project workflows are one-off, goal-driven, and may change depending on scope or circumstances (e.g., any one-off, unique jobs which you complete for your customers).

Put another way, process workflows keep your daily operations consistent, while project workflows guide unique initiatives from start to finish.

Because the Workflow Builder automates your workflows, it can only be applied to workflows that follow the same structure and steps every time. In other words, it only applies to process workflows.

Examples of processes

A job scheduling process is the repeatable way jobs are logged in a job management tool, such as BigChange.

A lead management process will include how new leads are captured, checked against existing contacts in a CRM and added as new contacts.

Workflow components

Every workflow you build must include:

At least one trigger – the event that starts the workflow
At least one action – the event that happens as a result

Let’s break that down.

What is a trigger?

A trigger is the starting point of your workflow. It’s the event that causes the automation to begin.

What is an action?

An action is what happens after a trigger is activated or as a result of another action or condition in your workflow.

Every action has an outcome. Sometimes there will only be one outcome for an action but often there will be two or more outcomes. This is where a workflow may branch, depending on the outcome of the action, leading to different ongoing actions based on the outcome of the previous action.

Conditions

In some workflows, you’ll want to make decisions before continuing with an action. That’s where conditions come in.

Conditions allow you to manipulate data, turning data from one form to another using a set of pre-defined rules. Another way conditions are used, albeit less common, is as a way to help your workflow decide what to do next, based on such rules. This is also known as conditional branching.

Example:
Let’s say your workflow receives a job request via email. Jobs must be routed to the correct teams depending on the location of the job. In order to turn the location data, for example the beginning of the postcode (input data) into the team data, conditions will be used.

Conditions will allow you to define which team is assigned according to the postcode affiliated to the incoming job request.

Now that we understand what is a workflow and the components which make up every workflow, let’s dive into the best practice methodology for how to move your existing workflows to the Workflow Builder.

💡 Tip

While reading this article, try to think of a process workflow in your business which you want to automate using the Workflow Builder.

Building Workflows Methodology

Step 1 — Choose a process to automate

Start by picking one repeatable process in your day-to-day operations. This could be:

Logging a new customer job in BigChange
Creating a new lead or contact
Adding notes to a customer record

👉 Choose a process that follows the same steps every time.

Step 2 — Visualize your workflow

Break your current process down into clear steps, using these questions to guide you:

What kicks off the process? (i.e. what is the trigger?)
What happens next? Break down each action into single steps.

Sketch a process map showing the trigger, steps, data inputs, and outcomes. We recommend using a simple box-and-arrow diagram to help you see the full picture.

💡Tip

You can use tools such as Powerpoint, Google Slides, Miro etc. to create your process map.

Step 3 — Define your workflow

Use the following key questions to help you to further define your workflow. This will help you to begin to understand how to build it in Build Concierge.

What are the minimum data requirements needed at each step?
Where does the data come from? (email, BigChange/another tool, manual entry, etc.)
What format is the data in?
Is the data available as a native variable in Workflow Builder, or do you need to extract/define it yourself? (i.e. using Extract Text or AI Prompt nodes)
Does data need to be manipulated? If yes:
1. What’s the input data?
2. What’s the desired output?
3. What are the conditions you will use to achieve the above?
How will you handle failed outcomes at each step?

👉 Writing this out will give you a checklist of requirements before you touch the Workflow Builder.

Step 4 — Check against Build Concierge capabilities

Based on your understanding of the Workflow Builder and its current capabilities, try to understand if:

Your workflow can be handled as one workflow in the Workflow Builder; or
If you need to break it into multiple workflows that connect together; and
If the steps can take place in the order in which they occur today or if the order should change.

Example:

A simple “new lead → create contact → send email → log note” fits neatly in one workflow. A more complex “multi-stage onboarding with branching rules” may require multiple smaller workflows.

Step 5 — Translate your workflow into Workflow Builder nodes

Finally, map the steps in your process to Workflow Builder nodes. You might want to create a second process map sketch but this time using the nodes as each step.

This table can help you to define the nodes and important information before creating a map:

Step

Workflow Builder node

Data required

Data source

Outcomes

Notes (branching, conditions)

Key Takeaways

Always start with a repeatable process.
Break it into small, single-step actions.
Identify data requirements and sources early.
Map your process to the nodes currently available in the Workflow Builder.
Keep it simple: if it can’t be automated end-to-end, split it into multiple workflows.

Now that you understand the 5-step methodology, let’s apply it to an example to help bring it to life.

Example workflow: Automate Job Creation from Incoming Emails

Meet JPC, a company providing pest control services for a range of clients around London. They have just started working with Build Concierge to reduce the processing time for their largest client, Transport for London (TfL). They are already using BigChange as their job scheduling/management tool and want to integrate the two systems to improve efficiency.

Their high level goals are to:

Automate the job creation on incoming TfL fault report emails
Extract required fields (fault code, location, description)
Push structured data into BigChange to create jobs automatically
Reduce manual processing time by at least 90%

Let’s use Build Concierge’s Methodology to help JPC automate their current job scheduling process, using the Workflow Builder.

Step 1 — Choose the process

Process chosen: To automate the processing of job creation in BigChange upon receipt of every TfL fault report email.

Step 2 — Visualize the current workflow

What is the Trigger?

The trigger is the receipt of an email from faultreport@tfl.gov.uk.

The subject of the emails follows the same pattern for every email:

“LU Metro Maximo Fault Report - Fault Ref: [digits] has been ASSIGNED”

The body of the email also always follows the same structure and includes important information about the fault, including the location and a ‘long description’.

What are the next steps in the current process i.e. Actions?

Locate the Fault Reference number
Search for an existing job in BigChange using the Fault Ref number
If it already exists, stop processing the job and notify an admin that the email relates to an existing job
If doesn’t exist, find the contact in BigChange according to the location defined in the email (each location is a separate contact in BigChange)
Create a job containing the job description populated from the email against the relevant contact.

Next, let’s create a process map to visualize the above:

Step 3 — Define your workflow

What are the minimum data requirements needed at each step?

Receive email
Identify the fault reference number = fault ref
Search manually for existing job in BigChange = fault ref + job ref
If it already exists, stop processing the job and notify an admin.
If doesn’t exist, find the contact in BigChange according to the location defined in the email (each location is a separate contact in BigChange) = location + contact ref
Create a job containing the job description populated from the email = fault ref / contact ref / job description

Where does the data come from? (Email/Concierge Support/BigChange/another tool, manual entry, etc.)

Fault ref - Email subject/body
Job ref - BigChange
Location - Email body
Contact ref - BigChange
Description / long description - Email body

What format is the data in?

TfL email body (plain text, consistently structured)
BigChange API

Is the data available as a native variable in Workflow Builder, or do you need to extract or define it yourself? (i.e. using Extract Text or AI Prompt nodes).

The following data points will need to be defined as variables and extracted from email:

Fault ref
Location
Long description

Since the emails are plain text and consistently structured, these data points can be defined as variables using Regex through the Extract Text node.

Does data need to be manipulated? There is no need to manipulate data in this workflow.

How will you handle failed outcomes at each step?

If fault code already exists = skip job creation and log note
If contact is not found = alert admin
Invalid email format = log + alert admin
API failure = retry up to 3 times, then alert admin

Step 4 — Check what’s possible in Build Concierge

Fits in one workflow? Yes, this flow can run end-to-end in a single workflow
Changes to order of steps? No changes to the order of steps are required.

Step 5 — Translate workflow into Workflow Builder

Nodes needed: Email trigger, Extract Text, Search Contact, Create Job, Send Email

Step	Workflow Builder node	Data required	Data source	Outcomes	Notes (branching, conditions)
Email received	Incoming Email node	n/a	n/a	Complete	Setup email forwarding from email hosting platform to email address of the node.
Review of email for key data points	Extract Text node	Fault reference Location Long description	Email body	Complete Failed	If complete, the workflow moves to the next step and searches for an existing job in BigChange. If it fails, it would be because the email is in the incorrect format and we will notify an admin using the Send Email node, including the reason for the error.
Check fault ref against existing job in BigChange	Find a Job in BigChange	Fault reference Job ID	Email body BigChange	Found Not found	A found job for this fault would mean that a job exists in BigChange. This would branch to log a Contact Note against the relevant contact/job notifying of the duplication. Not found would move to the next steps in the workflow in order to find the relevant contact (location) in BigChange and create a new job.
Check location from the email body against BigChange contacts	Find Contact in BigChange	Location Contact ref	Email body BigChange	Found Not found	Since the location code is set as the Contact Ref, we would use the Find Contact node. If the location is not found, we will move to a Send Email node to inform an admin.
Create job against relevant contact	Create Job in BigChange	Contact ref Fault reference Long description	BigChange Email body Email body	Complete Failed	Once job creation is complete, the workflow will end. If the job creation in BigChange fails, notify admin using the Send Email node, including the reason for the failure.