Built-in Workflow Feedback Setting
The people running a workflow every week are the ones who know what is wrong with it. The feedback setting gives them somewhere to say so, attached to the workflow itself, instead of in a message to you that gets lost.
Turn it on
Open the workflow's Workflow Settings and tick Display Give Feedback on runs. It is set per workflow, so you can collect feedback on the process you are actively improving without adding the prompt to everything else.
What people see
A Give feedback on this workflow link appears on every run of that workflow. Anyone working the run can use it, except guests.
The dialog asks for two things:
- Related Step, which is optional. They can point at the step that is wrong, or leave it at workflow level for something general.
- Feedback, the comment itself.
Pointing at a step is what makes the feedback actionable later, because you see the note next to the step it is about rather than having to work out which one they meant.
The prompt when a run finishes
Completing a run is the moment someone actually knows what was awkward about it, so the setting also prompts for feedback then. If your account is connected to Slack, whoever completes the run gets a direct message from the Manifestly bot inviting them to comment on the workflow. Like every Manifestly Slack notification, it can be muted from the message itself.
Where the feedback goes
Feedback does not arrive as an email. It collects on the workflow's own feedback report, under Reports, and is grouped into Workflow Level and Step Level.
The report is filtered by month, so you are reading a period rather than everything ever submitted. If a month looks empty, check which month you are on before concluding nobody has said anything.
Because nothing notifies you, put a recurring reminder in your own calendar to read it. Feedback nobody reads is worse than no feedback box at all: people notice, and they stop bothering.
Acting on it
When you do change the workflow off the back of a suggestion, remember that runs already under way keep the version they started with. See Updating Runs When a Workflow Changes. Telling the person who raised it that you made the change is what keeps the next suggestion coming.
Video walkthrough
This video walks through the built-in workflow feedback setting.