It would be great to be able to put a “time saved” action within different branches of a workflow. We have developed a workflow triggered by slack, and depending on the arguments handed to it, the workflow branches off into different processes. Some processes save more time than others. If it was possible to add an action or something (think the artifact action) that can be placed deeper down a workflow, it would allow us to generate better “time saved” metrics.
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Hey Shawn! Thanks for the note here – we don’t have any imminent improvements to this planned, but we are not too far removed from picking up work on helping users more concretely understand and report on the value various automation workflows provide. We’ve talked at a high level about how different “paths” in a workflow yield different outcomes, and that should be reflected in how we calculate value – whether that be time savings or something else entirely. I’ve put what you wrote here into that project planning document so it’s part of our mental model.
At the risk of going down a rabbit hole…are there things you (or anyone else out there reading this) wish you could report on with InsightConnect aside from time savings? If so, what do you have in mind?
Time savings is key, as it reflects directly back to ROI and resourcing considerations. The only other real metrics I can think that would be useful would be a more granular version of completed jobs, where like my time saved request, a trigger could be placed in a branch such that multiple could be with a specific workflow. This would allow us to better quantify which “branches” are being used more than others.
Another thought might be a way to capture the originator of a workflow; an individual user in the case of something like a slack trigger, or a service name for other triggers (email, API, etc). This would allow us to illustrate where inputs are coming from easier, and who is using the tool.
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100% agree… I have more than 1 Workflow that I have to ‘guestimate’ on how much time is saved because depending on what Path it takes, there are 5 different time saved values that could be put in. I like the idea of a ‘Time Saved’ plugin or something built into the Workflow design itself where you can say “Everything to X point is Y amount of time”. I have been asking for it for a while so glad that others agree with this too.
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