Workflows for Business Users

Who this is for: people who run a business process on MemberJunction (operations, finance, sales, membership, customer success) and the administrators who set automations up for them. It needs no code. Developers want the Workflows and Task Graphs Guide, which covers the same ideas with the internals.

What you will learn: what a workflow is, the ways one can start, what its steps can do, how to create one and see what it did, and how to ask an administrator to make one run automatically.

What a workflow is

A workflow is a set of steps that runs the same way every time. Every workflow has three parts:

flowchart LR
  W["<b>When</b><br/>someone asks, a schedule,<br/>or a record changes"] --> S["<b>Steps</b><br/>send, create, ask an agent,<br/>decide, wait for a person"]
  S --> R["<b>Result</b><br/>every run and every step<br/>is recorded"]

Examples of what organizations automate with workflows:

When an invoice is approved, email the customer and notify the account manager.
Every Monday at 8:00, summarize last week’s support tickets and send the themes to the team lead.
When a new member joins, send a welcome message, create an onboarding task for staff, and check in after two weeks.
When an application is submitted, have an AI agent screen it, then route it to a reviewer.

When a workflow can start

Start	Example	Who sets it up
On demand	Someone clicks Run, or asks an agent in a conversation	Anyone who can see the workflow
On a schedule	Every weekday at 7:00 in your time zone	An administrator
When a record changes	When an order becomes Confirmed; when a deal is won	An administrator

”Becomes” versus “is”

The most important idea about record-change automations: describe the change, not the state.

You write	What happens
”when the status becomes Approved”	Runs once, on the save that approved it
”when the status is Approved”	Runs on every later save of that record too: an edited note, a new attachment, a payment applied

The second is the most common cause of an automation that emails a customer five times. Always ask for the first.

Two more rules of thumb:

A newly created record has no “before”. A condition about a new record talks about its values (“a new order whose type is Sale”), not about a change.
Point at what does not get renamed. If a list of stages or statuses can be renamed by your team, a condition should name the specific stage or status record, or a yes/no flag on it (such as is a won status), rather than its label. Then renaming “Closed Won” to “Signed” breaks nothing.

What a step can do

Step	In plain words
Action	Do one thing: send an email or message, create or update a record, call another system. MemberJunction ships many actions, and each app adds its own
Agent	Ask an AI agent to do a task: research, summarize, draft, classify
Prompt	Run one AI instruction, such as “summarize this in three bullets”
Decision	Have AI answer a question, such as “how likely is this to churn?” or “which team should handle this?”, and branch on the answer
Person	Wait for someone to review, approve or complete something; the workflow continues when they do
For each	Repeat steps for every item in a list (every overdue invoice, every attendee)
While	Repeat steps until a condition is met

Branches. Where a workflow splits into paths, exactly one path runs: the highest-priority path whose condition is true. Steps on the paths not taken show as Skipped. That is normal, and is shown in grey, not red.

Is a workflow the right tool?

You want	Use	Who sets it up
One thing to happen when a record changes (“email the customer when their order is confirmed”)	A one-step automation: a single action attached to that kind of record	An administrator
The same change made to many records (update, enrich, re-score), now, on a schedule or on change	A Record Process, in the Bulk Operations studio	An administrator or power user
Several steps, a decision, a person in the loop, or work that takes minutes	A workflow	You draft it; an administrator adds automatic triggers

All three use the same kind of condition, so what you learn in one carries to the others.

Creating a workflow

Open the Workflows app and choose Create.
Pick how to start:
- Blank canvas: add steps and connect them yourself.
- Describe it: say what you want done in a sentence or two. MemberJunction drafts the steps and you refine them on the canvas.
- From a past run: turn something an AI agent already worked out into a reusable workflow.
Review every step on the canvas. Nothing is saved until you approve it.
Save. A new workflow runs on demand: it does nothing until someone runs it or an administrator gives it a schedule or a record-change trigger.

You can also start from a conversation. When an agent breaks your request into steps, its plan card offers Save as workflow, so a plan that worked once becomes something anyone can rerun.

Making a workflow run automatically

On a schedule

Ask your administrator for the schedule (“weekdays at 7:00, Eastern time”). Once set, the Scheduling app shows the job and its runs. A workflow that is paused or still a draft keeps its schedule but does not run on it.

When a record changes

Send your administrator a request in this shape:

Record: Invoices Event: updated Condition: the status becomes Approved Do: run the “Invoice approved” workflow Only for: all invoices (or: invoices of one company, or one specific record)

What you can count on once it is set up:

It runs after the change is saved, never in the middle of it. An automation cannot slow down or block the person saving the record.
A condition that cannot be checked stops the run. If a condition is broken, the automation does not run, rather than running for everything.
Important automations can be made durable. Your administrator can mark an automation that sends messages or talks to another system so that it survives a server restart and never runs for a change that was undone.
Every run is recorded, including a run a condition stopped, so you can always find out what happened.

Seeing what happened

Workflows app → Runs lists every run. Open one to see each step, what it received, what it produced, and where it stopped.
A step waiting on a person shows as waiting. That is the workflow working as drawn.
Your administrator can also see every automation’s attempts, including the ones a condition stopped.

Troubleshooting

What you see	Likely cause	What to do
It never runs on its own	It has no trigger yet. Workflows are on demand until an administrator adds one	Ask for a schedule or a record-change trigger
It never runs when a record changes	The condition is never true, or a newly created record is being tested for a “change”	Check the condition’s wording with your administrator
It runs too often	The condition describes a state (“is Approved”), not a change (“becomes Approved”)	Ask for the condition to be rewritten as a change
It finished but did nothing	Every branch was skipped, usually because an earlier step produced nothing for the decision to read	Open the run and look at the step before the branch
It is stuck	A step is waiting for a person, or a step failed and the steps after it are blocked	Open the run; complete the waiting step or fix the failed one
It ran while it was still a draft	A record-change trigger is switched on as soon as it is saved, even on a draft	Ask your administrator to switch the trigger off until the workflow is ready

Glossary

Term	Meaning
Workflow	A saved set of steps that runs the same way every time
Trigger	What starts a workflow: on demand, a schedule, or a record change
Condition	The rule a record change must meet for its trigger to fire
Step	One unit of work in a workflow
Run	One execution of a workflow, with a record of every step
Action	A single operation (send, create, update, call) that steps and automations use
Agent	An AI assistant that can carry out a task
One-step automation	A single action attached to a kind of record, firing on its changes (technically an Entity Action)
Record Process	The same operation applied to a set of records
Durable	Survives a server restart, and never runs for a change that was undone

Learn more

Developers and administrators:

Workflows and Task Graphs Guide, especially its “Triggers: when a workflow runs” section
Workflow Debugger Guide: stepping through a live run
Record Set Processing Guide: Record Processes and their triggers
Actions Engine README: one-step automations, conditions, and durable runs

Workflow guides for MemberJunction business apps, with the moments in each app worth automating:

Orders: orders, payments, subscriptions and access
Sales: deals, stages, wins and losses
MemberJunction BizApps: the catalog of business apps