Creating 'Sanity' Reports for Automated Processes

Creating 'Sanity' Reports for Automated Processes

Hi all

Have you created workflow automations in your CRM using Custom Functions or have other critical automations in place that you are dependant on working 100% of the time?

If one of these processes don't work how would you know? Yes, there is a failure report for Custom Functions however you need to manually check this all the time, it doesn't notify you of errors as they occur and it doesn't give you a clear reason for the failure. Also there maybe cases where an automation doesn't update records that may not be due to a Custom Function failing. 

It goes without saying that business process automation can grow a business exponentially however when critical automations don't work for any number of variable reasons this can negatively impact on business success. You may have cases where this has happened to you. If you have please leave your comments below. 

We recently completed a complex CRM implementation for an education business with over 150 automations, 18 Blueprints, 45 custom functions and several flows, within CRM and between Zoho Books. Many of these automations are dependant on others working correctly and also users following correct processes. As you can imagine with this many automations in place it is important to know as soon as something is not working as it should so you can immediately address the issue. 

Here is a what we put into place for all our clients. We call them 'Sanity Reports'. 

What we do is create report folders based on the automation analysis needed and set up simple tabular reports that list record information where an automation hasn't worked. (Eg. hasn't updated a certain field, hasn't created a record etc).

Here is a list of few we set up for the complex CRM implementation mentioned above that may give you some ideas on what you can set up in your CRM. Each one of these reports below are important because when a process fails for a record then it effects future automations, eg. Invoices not being created correctly, user unable to enroll a student, incorrect information sent etc: 

**note** 'Students' = Accounts & 'Interests' = Deals. This business also integrates with Zoho Books for Invoice and Recurring Invoice creation

=> Interests with no product Added
=> Current Students with no Products Added
=> More than 1 product added for a Student type
=> Current Students with no Product Added
=> Students with wrong territory information
=> Students with Wrong Territory Added
=> Unpaid Registration Invoice vs Interest Status
=> Registered Students with no invoices
=> Paid Registration with no Paid status in Interest
......and many others.....

Once these reports are set up you can set up scheduled reports to send these reports to management each day if you wish. Notification rules can also be set up. 

What the business wants to see in these reports is no data at all! This tells them all is working 100%

These 'Sanity' Reports serve 2 purposes:

1. Identify reasons for automations not working and then changing/updating automation, custom functions so that the same failure doesn't happen in future

2. Identify processes that aren't being following correctly by users and addressing these. Where a process is not followed correctly it may provide an opportunity to tweak user permissions or set up other customisations, automations so users can't make the same mistake in future.

Hope this post helps you automate your business success using you CRM and Zoho Products. Please leave a comment below if you found this topic helpful. 

Jason



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