Introduction
In this lesson, you will learn how to think about your workflow and visualize it in preparation for configuration in Workflow. Each of these sections will serve as landmarks that you'll use to translate your current process into an over.vu process.
We will walk through an example of a coffee shop looking to track their workflow via over.vu to help visualize the preparation.
Major Work Steps
Workflow operates using pre-configured templates of work. When preparing to configure Workflow, it’s important to identify your major process steps and understand how to translate them into templates.
The first step is identifying the major steps in your process. A step may be considered major if:
It contains multiple sub-steps
It acts as a bottleneck for subsequent steps
It has a clearly defined or critical assignee
Its status needs to be visible to others
Coffee Shop Example
For a coffee shop, major process steps might include:
Taking Orders
This is a major step because it is the primary input to the process and can generate multiple subsequent drink orders.Preparing the Drinks
This is a major step because it must be completed to produce the primary output.Serving the Drinks
This is a major step because it represents the final delivery of the product to the customer.
Minor Work Steps
After identifying your major work steps, the next step is to define the minor pieces of work that occur within each one.
Minor work steps are the most granular units of effort in your process. They collectively determine whether a job is completed successfully. Some minor steps occur every time, while others are conditional and only apply in specific situations.
Defining minor work steps helps you decide:
What should be represented as individual Tasks
What logic or automation is needed for conditional work
What level of detail your team needs to see and act on
Coffee Shop Example
Using the coffee shop workflow, let’s look at the major step Preparing the Drinks and break it down into minor work steps.
Major Step: Preparing the Drinks
Possible minor work steps include:
Grind coffee beans
Pull espresso shot
Steam milk
Add syrups or flavorings
Assemble the drink
Apply lid or garnish
Not every drink requires every step. For example:
An iced coffee may skip steaming milk
A tea may not require espresso at all
A specialty drink may include extra steps like foam art or toppings
In Workflow, these minor steps are typically represented as Tasks associated with the drink preparation Job. Some tasks may always be present, while others are created or activated only when certain conditions are met (such as drink type or
size).
Conditional Minor Steps
Minor work steps are also useful for capturing exceptions or special cases. For example:
Remake Drink (if the customer reports an issue)
Substitute Ingredient (if an item is out of stock)
Escalate Order (if preparation time exceeds a threshold)
These conditional steps ensure that edge cases are still handled within the same structured process, rather than being managed informally outside of Workflow.
By clearly defining minor work steps, you gain better visibility into how work is completed, create more opportunities for automation, and reduce ambiguity for your team. This level of detail also makes it easier to measure effort, identify inefficiencies, and improve the process over time.
Data Management
Workflow provides many opportunities to capture data, but these must be identified and configured ahead of time. Choosing the right data fields is one of the most important steps in creating effective templates.
When deciding what data to include, consider:
What data needs to appear on outputs (PDFs, receipts, emails)
What data is important to track (e.g., turnaround time, volume, trends)
What data should be digitized instead of handled verbally or on paper
What data is required to complete each task (reference fields)
Coffee Shop Example
In the coffee shop workflow, different steps require different data to be captured:
Order Taken (Cashier Template)
Fields might include:
Drink type
Size
Milk type
Add-ons (extra shots, syrups, temperature)
Customer name or order number
This data is critical because it becomes reference information for the barista. Capturing it clearly reduces mistakes and eliminates the need for verbal clarification.
Drink Preparation (Barista Template)
Fields might include:
Order number (reference field)
Drink status (in progress, delayed, completed)
Notes or exceptions (out of stock ingredients, substitutions)
This information helps track preparation time and communicates progress to the rest of the team.
Serving the Drink (Service Template)
Fields might include:
Order completion time
Confirmation that the drink was served
Optional customer feedback
These fields support operational tracking, such as average service time and order throughput.
Each form field is how users interact with the process. The more relevant data you capture at each step, the less your team needs to rely on memory, verbal communication, or external systems. Well-designed fields also make it easier to automate transitions, measure performance, and generate meaningful outputs.
Hand-Off Points
Hand-off points are moments in your process where responsibility or ownership of a work item is transferred from one person or role to another. These often occur when specialized knowledge is required or when work needs to be reviewed before moving forward.
Common hand-off points include:
A Quality Assurance review to ensure completeness or accuracy
A Subject Matter Expert taking over a complex portion of the process
Coffee Shop Example
In a coffee shop workflow, hand-off points might look like this:
Order Taken → Drink Preparation
Responsibility moves from the cashier to the barista once an order is submitted. At this point, the order must be complete and accurate so the barista can prepare the drink correctly.Drink Preparation → Order Ready
Once the barista finishes making the drink, ownership effectively transfers to the pickup or service staff. The status change communicates that the drink is ready to be served.Order Ready → Served
When the drink is handed to the customer, the work item reaches its final state and ownership is closed out.
Each of these transitions represents a natural hand-off. In Workflow, these hand-offs are strong indicators of where separate templates or status-driven automations may be useful. For example, the “Order Taken” template might be assigned to a cashier, while the “Drink Preparation” template is assigned to a barista.
Structuring your templates and automations around these hand-off points makes the process easier to follow, reduces confusion around ownership, and improves overall visibility into the status of work.
Process Mapping
Breaking your process into clear, defined steps and hand-offs makes it much easier to translate into Workflow.
Once you’ve done this, we recommend creating a process map—or another visual aid—to illustrate each step and how they relate to one another.
We typically organize process maps by tracking status changes across templates as the process progresses.
Each template + status combination is represented as one or more boxes, and the color of the connecting arrows indicates how work moves to the next step. This approach makes it easy to visualize:
Where automations are needed
How each template fits into the overall workflow
In most implementations, we treat major pieces of work as Jobs and minor pieces of work as Tasks, with automations configured at each hand-off point. Below is the legend we use when organizing process maps with clients.
Wrap-Up
Now you know:
How Workflow categorizes Major and Minor processes
Different ways of capturing data
Where to identify transition moments where ownership changes
Check Your Understanding
In this lesson you learned about:
Translating procedures into Workflow templates
Maintaining data with fields
Visualizing processes into Maps
Next up:
The next lesson of this course covers how to translate your processes into Workflow templates and set up the UI of Workflow.