Your first workflow is just your best form, plus one step.
That’s the only mindset shift this post is going to ask for. The rest is mechanics — and the mechanics are surprisingly forgiving. The Workflow Builder is visual, no-code, and reversible. Nothing you build is precious. The first workflow is for practice.
Here is how to do it without giving yourself a project plan.
Start with the form you already have
Pick the form whose responses cause you the most “and then” work. Not your most important form, but the one where the work after “Submit” eats the most time. Maybe it’s a contact form whose leads have to be routed to two different teams, an intake form that someone re-types into Salesforce, or an application that needs a manager’s sign-off.
That form is your candidate. You don’t need a new form. The Workflow Builder lets your existing form be the first step of a workflow.
Decide where the response needs to go next
This is the question that turns into your workflow. Not “What do I want to build?” but “Where does the response need to go next?”
Pick one of three answers.
- If it needs to go to a person, you need an Email step or an Approval step.
- If it needs to go to a system, you need a Connector step — most commonly to Salesforce, but a growing list of other connectors is available.
- If it needs to go to a different next destination depending on what was filled in, you need a Conditional Ruleset step before either of the above.
Pick one. (Just one!) Resist the urge to build all three at once.
Add the one step that does that thing
Open the Workflow Builder, create a new workflow, and click “Select a Form.” Choose the form you already have.
Then add the one step you picked.
- If it’s an email, use a Send an Email step, addressed to whichever person (or to an address captured in the form) you want, with the message you want them to get.
- If it’s a connector, use an Add a Connector step, wired to the system you want the data to land in.
- If it’s a routing decision, use a Conditional Ruleset step, followed by two or more paths leading to two or more steps.
Configure the step in the Properties Panel and save.
Test it
This is the step most people skip and shouldn’t.
Open the workflow, submit a test response, and watch what happens. Does the email arrive? Does the record show up in the system? Does the conditional route go where you expect when you select option A versus option B?
The Workflow Builder’s Workflow Responses list shows you exactly which step a response is currently on, which is useful for spotting where a test got stuck. Fix what didn’t work. Submit again. Once it’s clean, you’ve built a workflow.
Then expand
Once one step works, adding the second is much smaller than it sounds.
- You can add a confirmation email to the respondent that fires the moment the form is submitted.
- You can add an Approval step before the data lands in the next system.
- You can add a second form, assigned to a different person via Workflow Assignments, to gather more context before the workflow finishes.
- You can add a PDF generation step that produces a signed copy of the response.
None of these are necessary for the workflow to be useful. They are how the workflow grows once the basic shape is working.
The first workflow is for practice
Your first workflow doesn’t have to be the workflow you’ll run for the next five years. It almost never is. The point of the first one is to make the leap — to see, with your own form, that the routing you’ve been doing in your head can live in a system.
After you’ve done that once, every other workflow gets faster.
If you want a click-by-click reference, the FormAssembly Workflow Setup guide is a good place to go next.
Build your first one today
Ready to build it? Open the Workflow Setup guide and turn your best form into a workflow this afternoon. If you don’t have FormAssembly yet, request a free trial or schedule a personalized demo to see the Workflow Builder in action first.
