Workflows are an integral part of any CRM automation. You use them to initiate process automations at set frequencies with ease. Workflow automation in Zoho CRM comprises of the following:

• Workflow Rules - A set of rules that are executed when specified conditions are met.
  
• Email Notifications - Automated email notifications sent on triggering a workflow rule.
  
• Tasks - Tasks that are assigned to the users when workflow rules are triggered. * Field
  
• Updates - Automatically updating specified field values when workflow rules are triggered. 
  
• Web hooks - Communicates with third-party applications by sending instant web notification (one-way) every time an event occurs in Zoho CRM. 
  
• Custom Functions - Develop a set of Deluge Scripts to receive response from other applications and update CRM modules when the workflow criteria is fulfilled.
  

Let me take the example of insurance business for demonstrating this week's hack. You'd use the email notifications to nurture your prospects. You'd start with a welcome email followed by a series of emails that explains the benefits of various policies offered by you. All this works fine until your prospect buys an intended policy. Ideally, at this point, you should stop sending the nurturing emails that are set as a part of the recurring workflow. This could mostly be irrelevant and at times annoying. It appears that there is now way out as the workflow keeps recurring. The hack I'm sharing this week comes in handy to address this gap.It let's you stop a recurring workflow after a certain point of time based on your business requirement.

Here are the specifics:

1) Go to Setup --> Customization --> Modules and Fields --> Leads --> Drag and drop a check box field --> Edit properties --> enable by default --> Save layout.

2) Go to Setup --> Automation --> Workflow Rules --> Create Rule --> Select leads from the drop down --> Set the rule name .

3) Select On a Date/ Time --> Execute --> On --> Choose the date time field --> Set the recurrence for every month. 

4) In the filter section add the criteria that you need and then as the last criteria choose the checkbox field that you added earlier and set it as selected.

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5) Set the instant actions that you need for these records and then on scheduled action set the number of days after which the workflow should stop ( say for example you need to stop the notifications after 6 months) set the number of days as 190 days After Rule Trigger Date --> +Actions --> Choose field update --> New update --> select the checkbox and unselect it .

So what this step does is, after 190 days from rule trigger date ( i.e after 6 months ) it will uncheck the field that we used inside the workflow so when it tries to trigger the recurrence for the 7th month the workflow criteria no longer matches and hence the workflow will not be triggered. This can be used to stop the recurrence within the same workflow to prevent notifications to be sent after a certain period of time.