What is a Follower?
A Follower is someone who can track the progress of a workflow, once it has been triggered.
When interacting with workflows, there are three access levels, you’re either a follower, manager or creator. These levels dictate what you can see and do in relation to the workflow. For now, let’s concentrate on followers.
When can I add a Follower?
You have complete flexibility over who you add as a follower and when you add them.
You can add a follower from the very beginning of a workflow. This will provide the user with access to view every step as the workflow runs.
Equally, you can also add a follower to a workflow partway through. This will give them access to view the entire workflow, but this access will only be available from this step.
It is important to be aware that followers are not in a position to make changes to the workflow. They can view the workflow, but cannot take action. 👀
How can I add a follower to all workflow runs?
To add a follower to all workflow runs, you will need to be a Editor. You can add followers from the deploy pop-up of our workflow editor page. To do this, open the workflow editor for the workflow in question and click publish. Once in the pop-up, click people.
From here, you can select users that you would like to follow all activity. Once ready, hit the + button to add them.
How can I add a follower to specific workflow runs?
You can also add followers within a workflow. Doing this gives you a little more control over who is added as a follower. For example, you can use shared information to invite the correct member of staff for the school’s context.
You’ll need to start by adding an Update to your step. Not sure what an update is? Not to worry, check out our What is an Update? article.
To access updates, you can simply select ‘more’. This will appear next to the title of the step that you have created.
In the example below, the workflow is requesting a decision from the Line Manager. We want someone else to be able to follow along with the progress of this decision, so we want to add them as followers. We start by selecting ‘more’.
You will then be provided with the option to ‘Add a new update’ to this step. Selecting this option will allow you to add followers.
You will need to begin by deciding when you would like the update to happen. In our example, we would like the individual to become followers when an approval decision has been made. Therefore, we are stipulating that from this point forward, we would like to add workflow followers.
Select ‘add to follower list’. Then click into the ‘add new follower’ bar, which will cause a drop-down menu to appear. From here, you can select who you would like to add as followers by adding their unique tag. Check out the example below.
Not sure what a tag is and would like to find out more? We’ve got you covered Adding a Tag
If you are adding multiple followers, then you will need to make sure that you select the green + button to add one follower before adding the next. You can add as many followers as you like.
Finally, once you have added your followers, you will need to select ‘add update to step’ to confirm the addition. The small blue circle in the upper right-hand corner of ‘more’ indicates that updates have been added to this step. You can continue to add further updates if necessary.
You have now successfully assigned followers.