The Workflow Builder lets you automate actions inside Gradual based on activity in your community. When a specific event occurs, the workflow can trigger a series of follow-up actions automatically. Each workflow can include up to 20 actions.
Reach out to [email protected] to discuss getting this feature enabled for your community.
Example Use Cases
When an event is published → send a message to the community
When a member completes a course → add them to a group → add them to a space
Every Tuesday at noon → assign members with “tech” in their title to the Tech space
Workflows help you streamline engagement, onboarding, and communication without manual effort.
Understanding the Workflow Builder
The Workflow Builder uses a flowchart-style layout. Automations start at the top (the trigger) and move downward through actions, logic, and timing steps.
Each workflow is made up of:
Triggers – What starts the workflow
Actions – What happens after it starts
Logic/Paths – Conditional rules that control different paths
Timing – Delays between steps
Triggers
A trigger determines when the automation begins. This can be based on member activity, event activity, content activity, or a schedule. Each workflow can have one trigger.
Current Trigger Options
On a schedule (specific day/time, workflow status is completed when finished running)
Event published (can be filtered by event type)
Event started (can be filtered by event type)
Event finished (can be filtered by event type)
Content published
Member signup
Member first login
Member onboarded
Member updated profile
Member approval status changed (can be filtered by the previous and new approval status)
Member registered for an event (can be filtered by event type)
Member cancelled event registration (can be filtered by event type)
Member joined an event (can be filtered by event type)
Member checked into event (can be filtered by event type)
Member enrolled in a course
Member started a course
Member completed a course
Member published a post (can be filtered by post type: Discussion, Question, Idea, or Support)
Member commented on a post (can be filtered by post type: Discussion, Question, Idea, or Support)
Member submitted a club application (can be filtered by club)
Member joined a club
Member removed from club
Member submitted a form (can be filtered by form)
Member earned a badge
Member received contribution points
Member redeemed a reward
Member added to space
Member removed from space
Member added to segment
Member removed from segment
The trigger is always the starting point of your workflow. Some triggers include additional filters that let you control when the workflow runs. For example, event-based triggers can be limited to specific event types.
For Member approval status changed, you can choose:
Changed from: Select the member’s previous approval status. This defaults to Any Status, or you can select Approved, Pending Approval, or Unapproved.
Changed to: Select the member’s new approval status. Choose Approved, Pending Approval, or Unapproved. This field is required.
Changed from and Changed to cannot be set to the same status. The workflow runs each time a member moves between approval statuses that match these settings, including approval status changes made through bulk member actions. Saving a member without changing their approval status will not trigger the workflow.
Course-based triggers can be set to run for all courses or up to 10 selected courses. You can also choose whether the workflow applies to all members or only members from selected spaces, clubs, or segments.
The Member started a course trigger runs when an enrolled member starts a course and their course status changes from Not Started to In Progress.
Actions
Actions define what happens after a workflow is triggered.
Available Actions
Change Member Type
Select Guest, Limited Approval, or Standard to change the member who triggered the workflow to that member type. A member type must be selected before the action can be configured. If the member already has the selected member type when the workflow reaches this action, no change is made.
Add member to club
Remove member from clubs
Add member to space
Remove member from space
Add contribution
Assign a Profile Badge
Choose the badge from the Profile Badge list, which includes your custom and contributor badges. The badge goes to the member who triggered the workflow. Because a profile can only show one badge, awarding a badge replaces any badge the member already has.
Remove a Profile Badge
Register for event
Enroll in Course
Select up to 10 courses. The member who triggered the workflow is enrolled in each one, and any course they are already enrolled in is skipped. Send Enrollment Confirmation Email is off by default; turn it on to email the member once enrollment in each course succeeds.
Send a message
Callout: Messages cannot be sent and received from the same email address. If you are an admin testing with the same email as your member login, messages will not send.
Send an email
Send personalized emails to members as part of your workflow. When sending a test email, the email uses the selected test recipient’s first and last name wherever those values are included in the subject line, preview text, or email body. This allows you to check that personalized content displays correctly before activating your workflow.
Add member to segments
Remove member from segments
You can add multiple actions to create multi-step automations and sequences.
Note: If a badge selected in a workflow is deleted before the workflow runs, the workflow stops.
Logic/Paths
Logic and Paths allows you to create conditional paths within a workflow. This ensures different members experience different outcomes based on defined criteria.
If/Else Logic
Use If/Else conditions to evaluate:
Member properties
Event properties
Forum post properties
Course enrollment properties
Form Answers — available when the workflow uses the Member submitted a club application or Member submitted a form trigger and specific clubs or forms are selected
For text-based member properties, such as first name, last name, email, title or position, company, city, state, country, and custom member properties, you can check whether the field contains any of several values or does not contain any of those values.
Course Activity Date Properties
Member Properties also include three course-related dates that can be used in If/Else conditions:
Last Course Enrolled Date — the most recent date the member enrolled in any course.
Last Course Completed Date — the most recent date the member completed any course.
Last Course Activity Date — the most recent date the member took an action in any course.
For Last Course Activity Date, course activity includes enrolling in a course, starting a course, starting or completing a lesson, and submitting a quiz.
For each of these properties, you can check whether the date:
is a specific date
is before a specific date
is after a specific date
is within the last specified number of days
is more than a specified number of days ago
is empty
These properties use the member’s most recent activity across all courses and are available with any workflow trigger.
Course Enrollment Properties
For workflows triggered when a member enrolls in, starts, or completes a course, you can use Course Enrollment Properties to create different paths based on the member’s activity in the course that triggered the workflow.
You can create conditions using:
Status — select is or is not, then choose Not Started, In Progress, Completed, Incomplete, Passed, or Failed.
Progress — select is, is less than, or is greater than, then enter a percentage from 0–100.
Course Enrollment Properties are available for workflows using the Member enrolled in a course, Member started a course, or Member completed a course trigger.
If the member is no longer enrolled in the course when the condition is checked, the condition is treated as not met and the workflow follows the Else path.
For ungraded courses, Passed and Failed can still be selected as conditions, but those statuses are not reached. A condition looking for either status will be treated as not met.
Form Answers
For workflows triggered when a member submits a club application or a form, you can use Form Answers to create different paths based on the answers they submitted.
Form Answers are available when the trigger is set to specific clubs or specific forms. They are not available when All Clubs or All Forms is selected.
The conditions available depend on the type of question:
Single select: is / is not
Multi select: includes any of / does not include any of
Text: equals / does not equal / contains / does not contain / is empty / starts with / ends with
Location: is / is not
For example, you can create an If/Else condition that checks whether a member selected a specific response on a form, then send members down different workflow paths based on their answers.
If a question used in a condition is deleted, the workflow remains active, but the condition is treated as not met and the member follows the Else path. The affected step will display a warning so you can update the condition.
If you change the selected clubs or forms, conditions that use questions that are no longer included in the trigger will be cleared. Conditions that reference questions from clubs or forms that remain selected will stay in place.
If the defined condition is met, the workflow follows one path. If not, it follows another.
Example:
If a forum post contains the word “help” → send a message alerting the member it was seen.
All other posts → Updates Group Assignment
You can configure logic to look for partial or exact matches. For text-based member properties, select Contains any of or Does not contain any of to compare the field against multiple values. Enter each value by pressing Enter or typing a comma. You can add up to five values to one condition, and matching is not case-sensitive.
Path Logic
The Path feature lets you split traffic by percentage using a slider.
This is useful for:
A/B testing messages
Splitting audiences between different communication strategies
Timing
Delay
The Delay feature allows you to pause the workflow before the next step executes. Max delay is 90 days.
This is helpful when:
Sending a series of messages over time
Spacing out communications
Preventing all actions from happening immediately after the trigger
Creating a Workflow
Go to the Workflow tab.
View your existing workflows, or search/filter to find a specific one.
Click Create New Workflow in the top-right corner.
Choose from available templates (optional) to get started faster.
If your workflow includes a Send an Email action, you can view email performance later from the Actions menu using Email Metrics.
Editing a Workflow
Inside a workflow:
Edit the title in the top-left corner using the pencil icon.
In the top-right Actions dropdown, you can:
Activate (Publish) the workflow
Clone it
View the Activity Log to review workflow executions, check the status of each action, and troubleshoot any issues.
View Email Metrics for workflow emails. This option is available for workflows that include a Send an Email action or have previously sent workflow emails.
Archive it
Setting or Editing a Trigger
When creating a new workflow, you’ll be prompted to select a trigger on the right-hand side.
To edit an existing trigger, click the trigger at the top of the workflow to open its settings.
Configuring Course Triggers
When using Member enrolled in a course, Member started a course, or Member completed a course as your trigger:
Under Members, select All Members, or select members from specific spaces, clubs, or segments.
Under Courses, select All Courses, or select the specific courses that should trigger the workflow. You can select up to 10 courses.
Complete the rest of your workflow and activate it when you’re ready.
For Member started a course, the workflow begins when an enrolled member starts the course and moves from Not Started to In Progress.
If a course selected in an active workflow is deleted, the workflow will stop. You can review the workflow’s Activity Log for details.
Configuring the Member Submitted a Club Application Trigger
Use Member submitted a club application to start a workflow each time a member submits an application to join a club. This includes submitting another application after a previous application was rejected.
Select Member submitted a club application as the trigger.
Under Members, choose the members the workflow should apply to.
Under Clubs, select All Clubs, or select the specific clubs whose applications should trigger the workflow. You can select up to 5 clubs.
If you select specific clubs, you can use questions from those club applications as Form Answers conditions in your If/Else steps.
Complete the rest of your workflow and activate it when you’re ready.
If a question used in a Form Answers condition is renamed, the condition continues to work and displays the updated question text.
If the question is deleted, the affected step displays a warning. The workflow remains active, but the deleted question’s condition is treated as not met.
Configuring the Member Submitted a Form Trigger
Use Member submitted a form to start a workflow whenever a member submits a Gradual form. The workflow can respond to submissions from a standalone form shared by URL or QR code, as well as forms used as event surveys.
Select Member submitted a form as the trigger.
Under Members, choose the members the workflow should apply to.
Under Forms, select All Forms, or select the specific forms that should trigger the workflow. You can select up to 5 forms.
If you select specific forms, you can use questions from those forms as Form Answers conditions in your If/Else steps.
Complete the rest of your workflow and activate it when you’re ready.
Forms can be selected regardless of their current status. If a selected form is turned off, the workflow remains active, but no new submissions from that form will trigger it while the form is off.
If a selected form is deleted, it will no longer trigger the workflow. If other selected forms remain, the workflow stays active and continues to run for those forms. If the deleted form was the only selected form, the workflow stops.
Cloning a form creates a separate form. Existing workflows configured for the original form do not automatically apply to the cloned form.
Adding Steps
Click the + (plus) icons in the automation to add:
An action
Logic/Path
Time Delays
Click any existing step to open and edit its settings on the right-hand panel.
Preventing workflow loops
Some combinations of a trigger and an action make a workflow re-trigger itself. A workflow triggered by Member Received Contribution Points whose action adds a contribution that awards points, or one triggered by Member Earned a Badge whose action awards a badge the trigger listens for, would run again every time it finished.
While you are editing. Gradual checks for this as you build. The action that would re-trigger the workflow is marked with an error, and selecting the trigger explains that it can create a loop. Changing the action so it no longer awards what the trigger listens for clears the error — for example, choosing a contribution role worth no points, or restricting a badge trigger to badges the action does not award. You can still save the workflow as a draft while the error is showing, and the error is still there when you reopen it.
When you activate. A workflow with this error cannot be activated. Gradual explains why and the workflow stays in draft. Resolve the error and activate again.
When a contribution role changes. Editing a contribution role can turn an already-active workflow into a loop — for instance raising a role's points from zero while a workflow adds that role in response to points. When that happens the workflow is stopped automatically, and the reason is recorded in the workflow's Change Logs and in the community's Audit Log. Editing only a role's name does not affect any workflow.
When workflows trigger each other. Two or more workflows can form a loop that no single one of them shows. Gradual stops those chains while they run: once a chain reaches its limit, the run is marked failed with the reason "Stopped to prevent a workflow loop" and that workflow is stopped. The other workflows in the chain stay active. You can see the failed run and the reason in the workflow's Activity Log.
Activity Logs
The Activity Log allows you to monitor workflow executions and review the results of individual steps. You can see when a workflow was triggered, which actions were completed, and why certain actions failed or were skipped.
To access the Activity Log, open a workflow and select Activity Log from the Actions dropdown in the top-right corner.
Each time a workflow is triggered, a new record is added to the Activity Log. If a workflow is triggered by an admin action affecting multiple members, the activity is grouped into a single record.
Viewing Workflow Activity
The Activity Log displays the following information for each workflow execution:
Timestamp: The date and time the workflow was triggered.
Status: The overall execution status of the workflow.
Triggered by: The member or activity that started the workflow.
Completed Actions: The actions that were successfully completed.
Details: A summary of the execution results.
Action: Select View Detail to review the individual steps.
Workflow Status
Each workflow execution displays one of five statuses:
Succeeded: All actions were completed successfully, or some actions succeeded while others were skipped.
Partially Failed: Some actions succeeded, but at least one action failed or partially failed.
Failed: All actions failed.
Skipped: All actions were skipped because no changes or actions were needed.
In Progress: One or more steps are still running.
For example, if a workflow successfully adds a member to a space but skips enrolling them in a course because they are already enrolled, the overall workflow status will display Succeeded.
If every action is skipped, the workflow will display Skipped, and no completed actions will be listed.
Triggered By
The Triggered by column identifies what started the workflow:
Member activity: Displays the name of the member who triggered the workflow. If the member has been deleted, it displays “(Deleted member)”.
Scheduled workflows: Displays “On a schedule”.
Event or content activity: Displays the trigger and the associated event or content name, such as Event Published: “Summit 2025”.
Admin bulk actions: Displays the trigger name instead of individual member names, such as Member Approval Status Changed.
Completed Actions and Details
The Completed Actions column lists the actions that succeeded, in the order they appear in the workflow. If the same action appears multiple times, each successful occurrence is listed separately.
The Details column provides a summary of the results:
For workflows involving a single member, it shows the number of succeeded, failed, and skipped actions. For example: 2 succeeded · 1 failed · 1 skipped.
For workflows involving multiple members, it shows the results of actions that were not fully successful. For example: Send email: 98 sent / 20 failed.
If no actions succeeded, the Completed Actions column displays “-”. If every action succeeded, the Details column displays “-”.
For longer entries, hover over the shortened text to view the complete information.
Filtering and Exporting Activity Logs
You can filter the Activity Log to find specific workflow executions.
Use the filters at the top of the page to narrow down the results:
Date Range: Select a date range to view executions triggered during that period.
Status: Filter by Succeeded, Partially Failed, Failed, Skipped, or In Progress. By default, all statuses are displayed.
Triggered by: Search by member name, event name, content name, form name, or club name.
For example, you can filter by Failed to find unsuccessful workflow executions, or search for a member’s name to review workflows triggered by their activity.
You can also export the Activity Log:
Open the workflow’s Activity Log page.
Click Export.
Gradual will prepare a CSV file containing the activity log information.
You’ll receive an email with a download link once the export is ready.
The email will have the subject Your Workflow Execution Log Export from the
Gradual Dashboard.
Activity Log records are retained for 60 days.
Viewing Execution Details
To review what happened during a specific workflow execution, click View Detail next to the record.
A detailed view will open, showing each step of the workflow in the order it was executed.
The execution details include:
Time: When each step was executed.
Steps: The trigger, delays, conditions, paths, and actions included in the execution.
Status: Whether each step succeeded, partially failed, failed, was skipped, or is still in progress.
Details: Additional information about the result of each step.
The information displayed depends on whether the workflow was triggered for an individual member or a group of members.
Workflows Triggered by Individual Members
For workflows triggered by a single member, the execution details display the member’s name and the results of each step.
You can review:
Trigger: What started the workflow, such as a member registering for an event, submitting a form, or completing a course.
Delay: The configured waiting time before the next step.
If/Else: Whether the member followed the TRUE or FALSE path.
Split Path: Which path the member followed.
Actions: What happened when each action was executed, including successful results, skipped actions, and failure reasons.
For example, if a workflow enrolls a member in a course and awards them a badge, the execution details can show:
Enroll in Course — Succeeded: Enrolled in Leadership Fundamentals
Award a Profile Badge — Skipped: Already has Course Completion Badge
If an action fails, the Details column displays the reason for the failure.
The trigger details also provide additional context where applicable. For example:
For a member approval status change, you can see the previous and new approval statuses.
For an event registration, you can see the event name and whether the registration was completed by the member or an admin.
For a form submission, you can see the form name and whether it was a standalone form or an event survey.
For a club application, you can see the club name.
For a course-related trigger, you can see the course name.
This makes it easier to understand what started the workflow and how the member progressed through it.
Workflows Involving Multiple Members
For scheduled workflows, event or content triggers, and admin bulk actions, the execution details display a summary of the results across all affected members.
Instead of listing each member separately, the detailed view shows the results of each workflow step.
For example:
Delay: Waiting: 25 members
If/Else: TRUE: 80 members · FALSE: 20 members
Split Path: Path A: 60 members · Path B: 40 members
Send an Email: 95 sent · 3 skipped · 2 failed
Send a Message: 98 sent · 2 failed
These counts help you understand how members moved through the workflow and identify actions that need attention.
For email and message actions, you can also review additional information when an action is skipped or fails.
Send an Email: Click View email metrics to open the Email Metrics page for that action.
Send a Message: Click View {N} failed record(s) to see which members did not receive the message and why.
The failed message records include the member’s name, email address, and failure reason.
Understanding Skipped Actions
An action can be skipped when it is not necessary or cannot be completed because of an existing condition.
For example:
Add to Space, Club, Segment, or Sub-community: Skipped if the member already belongs to the selected group.
Remove from Space, Club, or Segment: Skipped if the member is not currently in the selected group.
Enroll in Course: Skipped if the member is already enrolled.
Register for Event: Skipped if the member is already registered.
Assign a Profile Badge: Skipped if the member already has the selected badge.
Remove a Profile Badge: Skipped if the member does not have the selected badge.
Change Member Type: Skipped if the member already has the selected member type.
For example, if a workflow attempts to add a member to a space they already belong to, the action will display Skipped, with the explanation Already in {Space Name}.
If an action includes multiple spaces, clubs, or other selections, and only some are already assigned to the member, the action can still succeed. The execution details will identify the selections that were skipped.
Understanding Email Action Results
Email actions can also be skipped or fail for specific reasons.
An email is marked Skipped when it is not sent because:
The member has reached their monthly email limit.
The email spacing rule prevents another email from being sent.
The member has unsubscribed.
An email is marked Failed when the sending attempt is unsuccessful because:
The annual email quota has been exhausted.
Email sending has been suspended.
An email service error occurred.
For example, if a member has unsubscribed from the relevant emails, the workflow will display Skipped, with the reason Unsubscribed.
If an email is marked as Sent, it means the email service accepted it for sending. It does not necessarily mean the email was delivered to the recipient’s inbox.
You can use View email metrics to review additional delivery and engagement information.
Change Logs
In addition to execution activity, Change Logs provide visibility into changes made to a workflow.
For example, if a workflow’s configuration is updated, you can review the changes separately from its execution history.
Workflow Action Usage
An action is counted each time a workflow action runs successfully for a member. For example, if one workflow action applies to 10 members, that counts as 10 actions. When your community reaches its monthly action limit, new workflow executions will not start. Workflows that are already in progress can still finish.
Your workflow list also shows how many workflow actions have been used in the current billing cycle.