Visual Workflow

When you're managing multiple shoots, sometimes it's nice to get a broad, birds-eye view of your workflow progress for all of your jobs and the fulfillment of products for your clients. You can easily do this with ShootQ's Visual Workflow. This feature also allows you see milestone due dates and change them if necessary, mark tasks/milestones/workflows as completed, put workflows on hold, show when a milestone was completed and whether it was finished on time, and a variety of other functions. Let's dive into it.

To get started just navigate to Tasks > Visual Workflow.

Initially, you'll see all of your workflows for all brands (unless you are user that does not have access to a particular brand).

 

 There are a variety of filtering options at the top of the page that allow you to drill down into workflows and make only certain ones visible. You can view workflows from a specific brand by selecting it in the Brands drop down menu.

 

Under the Workflows Filter section, you can choose to view only certain shoot or product workflows. It will show you available workflows based on your selection under the Brands menu. For example, If I select my Portraits Plus brand in the Brands menu, the Workflows Filter menu will only show me workflows from that brand (both shoot and product) and I can choose which ones I want to see. Alternatively, if I choose All Brands in the Brands menu, I can filter by all of my workflows for all brands. You simply click on a workflow to Add it to the visible workflow field (and then you can also remove it). If no workflows are Added to the visible field, the system will automatically show all of your workflows based on the selection in the Brands menu. The Brands menu and the Workflows Filter work in conjunction to give you the freedom and flexibility to see only the workflows you want to see.

 

The Quick Filters for 'Shoot On' and 'Product On' make it easy to toggle between viewing and hiding shoot and product workflows.

 

Each workflow grid shows shoots and events/appointments that have that particular workflow assigned to it. These shoots/events/appointments are arranged from top to bottom by shoot/event date which you can see right under the shoot title. If the workflow is applying to an event/appointment, you'll see the name of the event/appointment right next to the date. If there is no title next to the date, this indicates the workflow is applying to the main shoot.

 

The milestones for a workflow will appear in columns running across the page and you can quickly the see the status for a particular job. If a milestone is completed, it will display a checkmark. The colored circles in the grid indicate further statuses for a milestone.

• Open Green Circle - milestone is not completed but it's still not past due
• Open Red Circle - milestone is not completed and it is Past Due
• Open Yellow Circle - milestone is not completed and the workflow is On Hold
• Solid Green Circle - milestone was completed On Time
• Solid Red Circle - milestone was completed but not by the due date
• Solid Yellow Circle - milestone was completed but the workflow is On Hold

 

You can see the list of Tasks for a milestone by hovering over its status. Tasks can be marked completed (or unchecked if you make a mistake). The milestone due date and any milestone correspondence (emails and questionnaires) will also be visible in the Task window. The correspondence will automatically be sent after the milestone is completed. A completed milestone will show the completion date in the Tasks window.

 

And clicking on a milestone's status will mark all of the tasks within that milestone as completed. This will save you time if you are completing all of those tasks at once (and any milestone correspondence will be sent out).

 

 

If you want to mark off all the milestones (and their tasks) as completed, just click the 'Complete' button on the far right. NOTE: Marking a workflow as completed in this way will not send out any 'unsent' milestone correspondence. If you need to send this correspondence, we suggest marking each individual milestone as complete.

 

 

Click the Gear icon on the left to put a workflow on hold or the change the due dates of the milestones. And click on the shoot name to view the entire workflow for a particular job.

 

 

Finally, click the Fullscreen button to remove everything from your screen (i.e. ShootQ tabs bar, browser address window, etc) except your Visual Workflow. Press ESC to exit fullscreen mode.

 

If you ever update a workflow (for example, you might add/remove tasks or milestones), the changes will not affect a workflow that is attached to a current booked shoot; they will only affect future shoots. The original version and the modified version may have the same name, but they will be displayed as separate workflows in the Visual Workflows section. In the example below, The shoots at the top are assigned to the original version of the workflow which only has a few milestones. The shoots at the bottom are assigned the modified workflow where milestones were added. They both appear in separate grids in the Visual Workflow even though the same workflow name is used for both shoots.

By default the Visual Workflow will show ten shoots per workflow grid. To view more, just use the inner vertical scroll bar on the far right. The grid also shows up to 17 milestones per workflow. If a workflow contains more milestones just use the horizontal scroll bar to view them.

As you can see, the Visual Workflow is a fantastic place to get a broad overview of all of your workflows. It can help you analyze the stages of your shoots in relation to each other and help you manage all of your tasks and milestones. And you can also use it in conjunction with the global or shoot task managers. The Visual Workflow is just another weapon in your arsenal to keep you organized and on track to fulfilling your jobs and products for your clients. Happy Q'ing!