Compliance workflows are at the heart of your business account's day-to-day functions. Workflows are the tool in dotloop that move your agent's folders into the next review stage, when they submit those folders for review.
- Understanding workflows
- Adding stages to workflows
- Setting resubmit logic for stage
- Custom notifications for workflow stages
At first glance, you may have noticed that review stages from your workflows are part of your loop filters and you've most likely seen loops 'tagged' with these stages. Being able to filter and search for loops based on workflow stage is just the beginning of how workflows actually work in dotloop.
When an agent starts their loop, that loop is not in any compliance status, or stage. This is because sometimes loops are completely arbitrary and you, as the admin, need not be bothered by these loops. However, once an agent has decided that their loop is ready for your review, they will click the SUBMIT TO REVIEW button in that loop. This triggers the workflows for your compliance statuses that you have set up!
Your compliance workflows are located in your business account's templates section:
Above, you'll see we are looking at review stages for listing folders, or the LISTING WORKFLOW. When agents submit for review, they are asked for the type of folder they are submitting. Assuming they choose listing, the LISTING WORKFLOW will be triggered.
You'll notice, NEEDS REVIEW is set to default. That means the very first time an agent submits their folder for review, and chooses that 'listing folder', it will default into the NEEDS REVIEW stage. In addition to updating the compliance status of this folder, you as the admin will also receive notifications confirming that loops have been submitted into NEEDS REVIEW status.
From here, you will review the folder. When you are reviewing the folder, you choose what compliance stage the folder should now be in.
From the drop down, if you were to place the folder into the APPROVED stage, you'll notice from the first image above that there is no resubmit logic (we'll get to resubmit logic) - no place for the folder to go. In this scenario, any folder that is in the APPROVED stage will remain in the APPROVED stage even if the agent submits the folder for review again. However, in this scenario, if you were to place this folder into the RETURNED TO AGENT stage, the folder would 'flow' into the NEEDS REVIEW stage whenever the agent submits the folder for review. After all, folders that has been returned to the agent will most likely need to be reviewed again after changes were made!
By default, dotloop sets your business account up with fully functioning workflows for Buying and Listing transactions. While these may suit the needs of many accounts, we also give you the option to completely customize your workflows.
Adding stages to your workflows
When you add new stages to your workflows, choose names that describes the stage. You also have the option to set the stage as DEFAULT stage, which we talked about above. Clicking CREATE STAGE will result in that stage now being listed in this workflow. In this example, it would be created in my LISTING workflow.
Setting resubmit logic for stages
Resubmit logic is the way the review stage of an agent's folder will flow into another stage when an agent submits that folder for review.
Above, I have chosen to set the resubmit logic for the stage I created, MY NEW STAGE. I want this status to change to NEEDS REVIEW when the agent submits their folder that is in MY NEW STAGE for review. It's as simple as that.
Alternatively, you can clear any logic already applied to any stage by clicking DON'T UPDATE STAGE. For example, if you have resubmit logic set up for your APPROVED stage, you could clear the logic because you most likely do not want agents changing APPROVED folders.
You can alter or clear the resubmit logic for any stage.
Custom notifications for workflow stages
In this scenario, I have chosen that I want all of my immediate admins to be notified when any folder's stage is changed to NEEDS REVIEW. In this case, it is not necessary to checkmark any of my admins because they're all getting the notification. However, let's say there are particular review stages that you only want one admin to see notifications for. You would simply only checkmark that particular admin. You and your other admins would not be notified when an agent's folder had moved into that particular stage. You can do this with any review stage.