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7. Leverage Tonkean Statuses

Statuses enable you to track items as they move through a module workflow. There's a set of default statuses such as In Progress, Blocked, and Done, but you can create any custom status you need for your use case; most successful solutions take advantage of these custom statuses.

Additionally, you can use statuses to initiate actions when your items reach a certain point in your workflow. That is, you can configure an action to activate when an item reaches a certain status.

In this walkthrough, we create a new status and configure it so that every time a new email reply is added to an ongoing thread, the module takes the content of the thread and adds it to the item timeline for visibility and tracking purposes.

Est. time to complete: 4 minutes

Prerequisites

  • An Ask a Question action with the Monitoring a Thread setting enabled

Complete 6. Configure Forms with Conditional Logic before starting this walkthrough.

Video Walkthrough

Follow Along

  1. In the module builder toolbar, select the Statuses button. The Statuses panel displays.

  2. Below the list of default statuses, select + Add status option. A custom status field displays.

  3. Name the status "New Reply", then select Save and close the Statuses panel.

  4. In the module builder, locate the New message on Thread action block and select the add block button, add_block.png, directly after it. A new Action Block block is created and the Action Block panel displays.

  5. In the Workflow section of the Action Block panel, select Module actions. The Module actions options display.

  6. Select Add Comment to Item. The Add Comment to Item configuration displays.

  7. In the Comment field, select the insert field button, insert_field.png. The insert field dropdown displays.

  8. In the dropdown, select the Flow Items Fields button, then select Previous Actor Name. Enter a dash, "-", after the field, then repeat the process to add the following fields one by one to concatenate them into a single string: Previous Actor Email, ":", Previous Reply Text".

    The Comment field should read as follows, where the square brackets indicate a selected field: "[Previous Actor Name} - [Previous Actor Email]: [Previous Reply Text]"

  9. In the Send comment by field, select Actor of previous action.

  10. Select any space in the main module builder area to close the Module actions panel.

  11. Select the Module actions block title in the module builder and rename the block to "Add comment to thread".

  12. On the newly-renamed Add comment to thread block, select the Change Status button, change_status.png. The block Update Status options display.

  13. In the Update Track Status To field, select New Reply.

  14. In the module builder, locate the beginning of the Flow section and select the add block button, add_block.png, before the first Item is Added block. The Add Triggger When dropdown displays.

  15. Select Match Conditions. The Match Conditions panel displays.

  16. In the Activate Trigger When section, select the Search data field field (first condition field) and select Status.

  17. Select the Enter value field (second condition field) and select New Reply.

  18. At the top of the panel, select the edit icon, blue_edit_pencil.png, beside the action title and rename the action to "When there is a new reply".

  19. Now, you can select the add block button, add_block.png, after the newly-renamed When there is a new reply block to add any action you like.

You've configured statuses both to enhance visibility in your workflow and to activate a portion of logic in the workflow itself. Now, whenever a user replies to the email thread, our workflow recognizes that, adds to the item timeline, and initiates an additional action.

Next, we'll create a formula and global fields to further digest the data that's coming into our Tonkean module and provide important insight into our process.

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