--- title: "Workflow automation with AI steps and approvals | SalexHub" description: "When something happens, the next step follows: update, create, notify, wait or let an AI step judge. Test it first, and a person stands behind every run." url: "https://salexhub.com/platform/workflows" --- # Workflows **When something happens in your business, the next step follows, the same way every time.** Choose what starts it and what to check, then the steps: update a record, create one, tell the right person, wait for a date, or let an AI step judge. Try it on a real record before it runs, and every change it makes shows in the record's history. [Start free](https://app.salexhub.com/register) · [Follow one run](https://salexhub.com/platform/workflows#how) ## Say what happens next, once. A workflow is a rule your business already follows, written down so it runs by itself: the moment something happens, the steps follow, on any kind of record you keep. Follow one, Deal won, from the moment Tidewell's renewal is won. - **Start from what happens**: A record is created, changed or deleted, or joins a list. A deal reaches Won, a quote is accepted, an invoice is issued, a leave request is approved. Someone visits your website or sends a form. A goal slips, or a decision is due for review. - **The steps do the work**: Check the record with the same filters as your views and branch on yes or no. Then update a property, create a record, add it to a list, tell its owner or your admins, wait two days or until a date on the record, run another workflow, or take any other action SalexHub has. - **An AI step where judgment is needed**: Ask a model about the record, and its answer is written into a property you pick: a score, a summary, a category. The next step branches on it, and your team reads what it decided on the record itself. Each run's AI credits have a ceiling you set. - **Try it before it runs**: Start from a template, then test the workflow on one of your records: you see what it would do, and nothing changes, nobody is told and no AI credits are spent. Changes to a live workflow stay a draft until you publish, and every version can be brought back. A test run on one deal: what would happen to it, step by step, in the test's own words, from the condition that holds to the person who would be notified. A note says nothing was changed. ## The rules each person stops chasing. Every business runs on rules somebody remembers. Here is one workflow for each person who used to remember it. - **Sales: No deal sits in a stage unnoticed.** When a deal reaches Proposal, wait three days, then remind its owner to check in, with the deal named in the notice. - **Accounts: Won is invoiced the same day.** When a deal is won, the invoice is created from its lines, ready to issue. A rule holds the large ones for a second pair of eyes. - **Owner: Hear about it when a goal slips.** When the quarter's goal moves to at risk, tell the admins and open a task to review the pipeline, the day it happens. - **Office: An approved leave lands in everyone's plan.** When a leave request is approved, tell the team lead and create a task to hand over the person's open work before they go. ## Automatic, and never out of hand. A workflow runs while nobody watches, so its limits are built in rather than hoped for. - **A budget on every run.** Each run may take 100 steps and spend 50 AI credits unless you set other limits. Past them it stops and says so, rather than running on. - **No chain reactions.** A change a workflow makes never starts another workflow by itself. Only a Run workflow step starts one, and a workflow that would call itself in a circle is refused when you save it. - **It picks up where it stopped.** A run interrupted by an update carries on from the step it reached, and no step acts twice. A workflow that fails never undoes the change that started it, and its run history says what happened. - **Someone stands behind it.** Every run acts with the rights of the person who published the running version, and only on records they can open, never with more. [Hold a step for approval](https://salexhub.com/docs/control/approval-rules) ## One run, and the people in it. Automation nobody answers for is how a small mistake becomes a hundred. Follow one run of a workflow that starts when a deal is won: it does the work by itself, and at four points a person is in charge. - **Before the first run, published: Someone stands behind it.** The version that runs, published by a person. Each run acts with that person's rights and only on records they can open, never with more. Waiting for you. Publish it yourself: a step that sends, issues or archives acts only in a version a person published by hand. - **The deal is won, a model's answer: A judgment, written down.** A short handover for the delivery team, written by an AI step into a property of the deal, where everyone can read it and the next step can branch on it. Waiting for you. Read it on the deal, and correct it if it is wrong. - **The invoice is ready, held by a rule: A large invoice waits.** The invoice created from the deal, and its issue held by your approval rule for large amounts. The run stops there, and nothing is issued until someone decides. Waiting for you. Approve the invoice to issue it, or reject it. - **A customer who asked for a person, do not automate: Left to you.** A record marked Do not automate, which no workflow, agent or integration may change, and a run that says it stopped there. Waiting for you. Make the change yourself, or clear the mark when the customer is happy to be automated. ## Where you build it, watch it and step in. A workflow is drawn on a canvas, runs in the background, and comes back to people when it needs them. - **The canvas: Drawn, not coded.** Add steps with the plus on the canvas, branch on yes and no, and see which other workflows start on the same event. Undo and redo as you go. - **Run history: Every run, replayable.** Each run with its record, its status, its steps and the AI credits it spent. Replay any run on the canvas to see which steps ran, which branch was taken and what failed. - **Approvals: Where held steps wait.** A step your approval rules hold waits with everything else that needs a decision, under the workflow's name. The run's history links straight to it. [More](https://salexhub.com/docs/control/approval-rules) - **The Agent: Ask about any run.** Ask the Agent why a run stopped or what a workflow did this week, and it answers from the run history. Describe a new rule, and it drafts the workflow; saving or publishing it waits for your approval as a card, whatever the Agent may do on its own elsewhere. ## How to get Workflows. Workflows come with every SalexHub plan. AI steps spend AI credits from your organization's own balance, which paid seats fill each month. - **Free**: included. Included. No AI credits for AI steps come with the plan. - **Pro**: included. Included. Each paid seat adds 100 AI credits a month for agents and workflows. - **Business**: included. Included. Each paid seat adds 200 AI credits a month for agents and workflows. - **Enterprise**: included. Included, with AI credits for workflows by contract. - Owners and Admins build and publish workflows, and an admin can give that right to another role. - Steps without AI spend no AI credits. - Try Pro or Business free for 14 days, with 500 AI credits. ## Read more - [Approval rules](https://salexhub.com/docs/control/approval-rules): Hold a single step until someone approves it. - [Webhooks](https://salexhub.com/docs/developers/webhooks): A signed delivery to your endpoint when a record changes. - [The Agent, workflows and the API act with the same permissions](https://salexhub.com/blog/one-registry): Why a workflow step meets the same approval rules as the Agent. ## Questions about Workflows **Can a workflow run on a schedule, every Monday say?** A workflow starts when something happens. For a job that repeats on the clock, such as a Monday summary, a Mini wakes on schedule and reports to you. **Can a workflow do something I am not allowed to do?** No. It acts for the person who published the version that runs, with that person's rights, and only on records they can open. **What if I want a person to check one step every time?** Add an approval rule for that action. When a run reaches it, the step waits in Approvals and the run stops there; approving it performs the step. ## Write down the rule you keep repeating. Start from a template, test it on a real record, and publish it when it does what you would have done. [Start free](https://app.salexhub.com/register) · [See pricing](https://salexhub.com/pricing) --- The same page for people: https://salexhub.com/platform/workflows. Index of this site for agents: https://salexhub.com/llms.txt