A "workflow" can be defined as "the sequence of industrial, administrative, or other processes through which a piece of work passes from initiation to completion".
In Holmes CRM, we have different types of workflow objects:
- Cases: used to manage customer requests or incidents, requests between teams, operations & maintenance work, etc.
- Projects: In project management a project consists of a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result.
- Opportunities: used to track business opportunities by Sales teams.
- Quotes: commercial propositions
- Orders: purchase orders are formal requests of products and services, can be received from customers, or issued to suppliers.
- Tasks: tasks can be created standalone, or can be associated to other workflow objects such as cases or projects.
Cases are created to manage back-office work, requests between teams, maintenance activities, etc.
Cases are workflow objects, as they are pieces of work that are initiated, dispatched to teams, and eventually closed.
In Holmes, the basic workflow operations are:
- Accept, from a queue to one's WIP bin
- Dispatch, from person work-in-progress (WIP) bin, to a queue (normally shared by many employees)
- Reject, out from the queue, back to the creator
- Forward, from one queue to a different queue
- Assign, directly to one person's WIP bin (only administrators)
- Yank, to grab from one person WIP bin (only administrators)
This video shows how to create, dispatch and close a case, and also shows the SLA feature for cases.
A Service Level Agreements (SLA) is a contract between a service provider (either internal or external) and the end user that defines the level of service expected from the service provider. Normally SLA define deadlines for activities such as cases or projects.
In Holmes CRM, deadlines can be set for workflow objects such as tasks, cases, projects, etc.
Historically, dead lines where lines draw around a prison, beyond which prisoners were liable to be shot. In Holmes CRM, however, when missing deadlines, we just send an escalation notice by e-mail to the managers configured in a escalation matrix, and display an alert in the main panel of the Console, as explained here.
