To provide the best experience to your leads and customers, it’s crucial that you have a solid process for tracking engagement from start to finish. To be effective, you typically need to use a vast amount of spreadsheets and have access to a range of information. Now with workflows, you can skip the spreadsheets, add your contacts directly to Nimble and start organizing and engaging.

The first step to utilizing this feature is setting up workflow templates. Industry-specific templates have been created to help you quickly set up your workflow and get started.

You may already be familiar with our Lead Qualification Workflow Template which you can learn more about here: Nimble's Lead Qualification Workflow

Workflows and Templates can be created from Settings. Just visit the Workflows tab and click on “Settings”. Once here, you’ll see “My Workflows” and “My Templates” at the top.

My Workflows - Enables you to create one-off workflows or choose from a list of industry-specific templates

My Template - Enables you to create custom templates that can be reused at any time by yourself or your team. After templates are created, you will see them listed here.

As your business grows, you will need to provide your team with simple and effective workflows so they can handle any number of complex processes. This is where preset workflows come in. Nimble has created industry-specific workflows to help your team reach their goals.

Within Workflow settings, just click on “Add New Workflow”. From here, you will see a list of templates to choose from.

When you choose a preset template, there will be predetermined stages and board card fields that are specific to that industry.

For example, if you choose the “Business Development” workflow template, you will see the following set of unique Stages and Board Card Fields:

Stages - A workflow consists of a series of stages typically starting from the beginning of a process until its completion. Use stages to define and track a particular part of a business process

Board Card Fields - These fields will display on every card in the workflow board and every column in the workflow lists. These fields are the default for each user when they first go to a workflow board. Users may override what they see using the “Configure Card” control next to the board. More info about this here: Using Workflows Boards and Lists

Don’t worry, you can alter stages and board card fields to fit your specific needs.

If you need to edit a stage, just click the pencil icon and you’ll be able to change the name, description, and expected close date. You can also delete a stage or add a new one.

For Board Card Fields, you’ll be able to preapprove whether you would like to use the selected fields. To remove a field, just click the trashcan icon.

If you choose to use the unique board card fields, just click “Create Workflow” and these fields will be saved automatically to your workflow.

Please note that these are not standard fields in Nimble and therefore, custom fields will be created in your account once you create the workflow.

After creation, you can find these custom fields in your Settings >> Data Fields and they will be available to apply to other workflows or to contact records.

Once you are done setting up your workflow, you can choose “Save as New Template” which will save the workflow under “My Templates” and give you the ability to use it for another process in the future.

You can also choose to create your own workflows from scratch. When you do this you will be creating a singular workflow. However, you can always save this workflow as a template so that you can quickly utilize it again in the future.

Just click “Save as Template”.

The workflow will then be available to use within “My Templates”.

The process is the same for creating a workflow and a template. You will add:

After you have named your workflow and entered a description, add as many stages as necessary to track your contacts from start to completion. Be sure to add instructions as well so that your team is on the same page as to the intention of the stage.

Click the pen icon to edit a stage or the trashcan icon to delete it. When you are ready, make sure to click "Save Changes" to keep the modifications.

Add a list of reasons why a contact may not have been successful. This will help you to analyze how to improve the workflow. For example, you could add “No budget” as an exit reason which would indicate that the company does not have the funds to purchase at this time.

This list will display every time a contact exits unsuccessfully from a workflow.

You can customize the list of fields in Board Cards so that they are relevant to your business.

The fields that you selected will appear on the board card when back in the Workflow tab.

Full info about the contact can be found within the contact record or by switching to lists view mode.

Make sure to save all of your changes by clicking “Create Workflow”.

We would love to hear your feedback or questions about our latest feature, please write us at care@nimble.com, initiate a chat from this FAQ, or join one of our Nimble Onboarding and Best Practices sessions, held every weekday at 9 AM PT.