ClickUp workflows: A tutorial from an expert user

Every project has workflows that move tasks along and help employees stay within scope, budget, and timeline constraints. These workflows may differ between projects, but they all have specific tasks and assigned personnel to complete them. If you use a project management solution like ClickUp, you can automate workflows to achieve greater efficiency.

Latrice Claiborne, a self-proclaimed “tech tools fanatic” and founder of Trinity Business Solutions helps business owners improve efficiency through technology and automation. ClickUp — and its workflows feature — is one of many tools she uses to make this happen.

Keep reading to learn how to automate a ClickUp workflow, the benefits of doing so, and how Claiborne makes use of the feature for one of her clients.

The benefits of automating workflows in ClickUp

Using the ClickUp workflow feature offers a number of benefits:

• It saves time. “We often don’t realize how much time we spend doing tasks manually that can be automated,” Claiborne explains. “I always recommend business owners do a thorough task assessment to identify what actions can be automated — sometimes it’s just a step or two, but in some cases you can automate a large share of a workflow.”
• It reduces human error. When you automate work, you reduce the errors and omissions that often happen with manual processes. “Of course, not everything can be automated; however, every time you automate a step, that’s one less opportunity for your team to miss responding to a client or sending an important document,” says Claiborne.
• It saves money. Every hour saved through automation is an hour your team doesn’t have to bill you for. Claiborne says she’s saved so much time for her clients’ businesses and her own by automating workflows. “Not only do I save on payroll and contractor expenses, but I also know that whatever I’m paying my team to do is actually adding value to my business.”

A ClickUp workflow example

Claiborne shares an example of a ClickUp workflow she created for one of her clients, a staffing agency. Prior to working with Claiborne, here’s how the client’s manual workflow proceeded:

• Applicants used the staffing website to apply for a job.
• The client team received an email for each submission and added the applicant to an applicant-tracking spreadsheet.
• At each juncture of the hiring process, the client team updated the spreadsheet and sent an email to each applicant.

“This process was extremely time consuming and inefficient, not to mention prone to errors and missteps as team members moved from program to program and call to call,” says Claiborne.

After onboarding the client and integrating the client’s staffing solution with ClickUp, Claiborne created a ClickUp workflow. Now the workflow looks like this:

• Applicants use the staffing website to apply for a job.
• After submitting their application, applicants are automatically added to a ClickUp space.
• ClickUp assigns relevant tasks to individual team members.
• At each juncture of the hiring process, team members simply update the applicant’s status — e.g., discovery, interviewing, background check — and ClickUp sends a templated update email to the applicant.

A powerful pairing: ClickUp and Jotform

Jotform is a powerful form builder you can use to further enhance your ClickUp experience. You can integrate ClickUp with Jotform to gather task requests and project information through customizable online forms and have them appear in your ClickUp account automatically as new tasks.

Need some new copy for an upcoming advertising campaign? Set up a form that lets team members submit requests to a specific copywriter, along with a desired due date and description of their copy needs. Once a team member submits their request, it automatically shows up as a task in ClickUp assigned to the indicated copywriter.

Jotform offers advanced form customization options as well as thousands of form templates for all kinds of business processes. Get started with one of these project management form templates or try out the integration today.