Workflow automations
Bolstering Courier's competitive advantage
Why do this project?
Empower sales team
Our competitor had released features in their automations workflow that were robust enough to cost us an important deal.
Our sales engineer had provided feedback to leadership.
DS implementation
Over 9 months we implemented a new design system accross our entire app.
To maximize value to our customer with every sprint we incorporated new features and bug fixes with every page we updated.
Customer issues
We were receiving a high volume of support tickets related to automations, particularly due to users maxing out the number of blocks within a single automation.
Our system struggled to handle the excessive data being pulled in by these large setups, which were necessary under the current configuration.
Only ~20% of users who had clicked into automation workflow published one within 7 days.
Team members interacting with customers expressed the impression that customers have a strong desire to use automation workflows, but in practice, they had very few of them live in production.
Insights
Bloated canvas
The existing design would only allow for one "if" statement per automation block. Customers needed to use many "if" conditions to create the workflow they needed.
This resulted in very long, convoluted workflows that were spaghetti like. These were very difficult to follow and understand. It was even more difficult for others (who had not built the automation) to be able to comprehend how the automation works.
No Guardrails
Inputs would not provide feedback on the validity of users inputs. In some cases, we had inputs specific to Courier, and yet users had to manually type these settings and would not receive validation feedback (errors/valid).
To troubleshoot, users would go to the logs page where they could get information referencing the entire automation. However, there was no way for users to pinpoint exactly which automation block had errored.
Hard to track changes
Clicking within any input or automation block would indicate an update was made. But users had not actually made a change and even if they had, they could not undo it.
This was confusing and caused users anxiety since these workflows automatically send thousands of notifications. This discouraged exploration within automations and made it very intimidating to click around or make changes.
Improvements
1. More control flow possibilties
Designed a control switch which allows mutiple if statements within one block.
2. Greater status visibility
Error notification on nodes take users straight to the problem area for review. Also acts as a guardrail.
3. Version history Capabilities
I designed a publish history functionality within the side/top panel.
More control flow possibilities
Former Limitations
It was only possible to create one if statement for each automation blocks. This resulted in bloated automations canvases. They were very confusing to understand and maintain.
Switch node
Using the newly designed switch node, users can add as many if statements as they want on one card. Automations are simpler and snappier (~25% faster). A card using a switch node with 3 if statements is shown below.
Greater status visibility
Former Limitations
Users could only find errors within logs, which is on a separate page. They would not get any feedback on errors within automations. Even in logs, they had no reference for the specific spot / node at which the error occured.
Error feedback
Now nodes are highlighted when there is an error, and the side panel also lights up with the error. Iconography is gray and colored when the automation is active and has all the info it needs to operate.
Version history
Former Limitations
Any click would show an updated saved copy which caused users distress. There was no way to clear those changes or to go back to an old version.
Publish version history
I was approved to have versioning history for published copies only (not all continuous versions). I've designed version history in the top panel, shown below.
