Understanding Workflows

Workflows allow you to automate customer journeys inside BotLance using a visual builder. Instead of handling every interaction manually, you can define what should start an automation, what should happen next, how information should be collected or evaluated, and which actions should occur as the customer moves through the journey.

A workflow can be very simple or highly advanced. You might use one to send a message after a particular event, collect customer information, qualify a lead, respond differently based on a condition, wait before continuing, update customer data, perform an action, or connect several of these steps together into a complete automated experience.

The Workflow system is designed to remain flexible. BotLance may continue adding new triggers, steps, actions, channels, and capabilities over time, but the underlying idea remains the same: an event starts the workflow, and connected steps determine what happens next.

When you open Workflows in BotLance, you are entering more than just a list of automations. The Workflow section also contains shared resources that can be used throughout your automations.

Your workflows are where the customer journeys themselves are built and managed. Alongside them, you can manage resources such as Tags, Custom Fields, and Workspace Fields, which allow information to be stored, reused, evaluated, and updated across different workflows.

For example, a workflow might add a tag when someone becomes a qualified lead, save a customer's budget into a custom field, or reference a workspace value that is shared across multiple automations.

You don't need to configure all of these resources before creating a workflow. They are available when your automation needs them.

When creating a new workflow, you can begin with a ready-made template or start from scratch.

Templates provide a prepared starting point for common automation patterns. They are useful when you want to begin with an existing structure and customize it for your own use case.

Starting from scratch gives you a blank canvas where you can build the journey exactly the way you want.

Whichever approach you choose, the same core Workflow Builder is used to create and manage the automation.

Every workflow can be understood using a simple structure:

Trigger → Steps → Decisions or Actions → Result

The Trigger determines when the workflow begins.

The connected steps determine what happens after the workflow starts.

Those steps can send information, collect data, make decisions, wait, perform actions, or continue the customer into another part of the journey.

This structure allows you to build anything from a short two-step automation to a much larger customer journey with multiple branches.

Every workflow needs a reason to begin. That is the role of the Trigger.

A trigger listens for a particular event and starts the workflow when that event occurs. Depending on your setup, this could be something that happens in a conversation, a change to customer data, or an event received from another connected part of your business.

For example, a workflow might begin when a customer sends a particular type of message, when a tag or field changes, when a form is submitted, or when an appointment event is received.

The available trigger options can expand as BotLance adds new capabilities and integrations. The important concept is simply that the trigger defines when and why the automation starts.

Triggers are covered in detail in the next guide.

Once a workflow has started, the rest of the journey is created by connecting steps on the visual canvas.

Each step represents something BotLance should do or evaluate. You can connect steps together to create a linear journey or create different branches when the customer should follow different paths.

The canvas makes it easier to understand the journey visually. Instead of reading a long list of automation rules, you can see how the workflow moves from one step to another.

Connections between steps are important because they determine where the workflow continues after each part of the automation has finished.

BotLance provides different building blocks for creating workflows. The exact options may continue to grow, but several core types illustrate how the builder works.

A Message step can communicate with the customer and can include conversational content and supported interactive elements.

A Media step can send reusable content such as images, videos, documents, or other supported assets, including media stored in your BotLance Media Library.

A Data step can collect information from the customer and save it so it can be used later in the workflow.

A Condition can evaluate information and send customers down different paths depending on whether certain rules are met.

A Wait step can pause the workflow before continuing, which is useful when an automation should resume after a particular delay.

An Action can perform an operation using capabilities available to the workspace. Depending on your configuration, this could involve customer data, connected services, business systems, or other BotLance capabilities.

A Script step allows custom logic to be introduced when a workflow requires more advanced processing.

You can also use elements such as Notes to organize and explain the workflow visually without affecting how the automation executes.

These are examples of the kinds of building blocks available in the Workflow Builder. As BotLance evolves, additional capabilities can be introduced while following the same visual workflow structure.

Workflows become much more powerful when information can move between different parts of the journey.

BotLance can work with customer information, collected values, Tags, Custom Fields, Workspace Fields, and other available data throughout a workflow.

For example, a workflow might ask a customer for their budget, store the answer, evaluate it in a Condition, update a field, and then continue along the appropriate path.

This allows workflows to respond to real customer information instead of following the same fixed journey for everyone.

Later guides will explain data collection, variables, fields, and mapping in more detail.

Workflows can also interact with capabilities outside the immediate conversation.

For example, a workflow may perform an available BotLance Action, work with a connected business service, send information to an external system, or react to information received from another platform.

This allows Workflows to connect customer conversations with real business processes rather than limiting automation to messages alone.

The exact actions available depend on the capabilities configured in your workspace and can expand as additional features are introduced.

Workflows are designed to work with supported customer channels.

The same automation concepts remain consistent, but individual channels may support different message formats, interactive elements, media types, or other capabilities. BotLance uses the selected channel context to ensure that the workflow works appropriately for that environment.

This means you don't need to learn a completely different Workflow Builder for every channel. The workflow structure remains familiar while BotLance handles channel-specific capabilities where necessary.

Before activating an automation for customers, you can test the workflow from the builder.

Testing allows you to move through the journey as if you were the customer, check messages and branches, verify collected information, and make sure the workflow behaves the way you expect.

This is especially useful when a workflow contains multiple steps or conditions because you can test different paths before making the automation live.

Some actions connected to real external services may interact with those services during testing, so always review what a workflow is configured to do before running a test.

Testing and troubleshooting are covered in more detail in a dedicated guide.

You do not need to build a complicated workflow from the beginning.

A good first workflow might contain only a trigger and a few connected steps. Once that works correctly, you can gradually add conditions, data collection, delays, actions, fields, integrations, and more advanced logic.

Because the Workflow Builder is modular, you can continue expanding an automation as your business needs grow.

The goal is not to use every available feature. The goal is to create a clear journey that accomplishes the task you need.

Now that you understand how Workflows are organized, the next step is learning what starts them.

In the next guide, we'll explore Triggers in detail, including how BotLance detects events, how different trigger types work, and how to configure the starting point of your workflow.