Use Start from spreadsheet to launch up to 500 workflow runs from a CSV. The workflow must be live, start with a form, and use required questions. Upload the CSV, match columns and cell data, choose test or live settings, then launch immediately or schedule the runs.
When to use it
Use this when you want to trigger up to 500 workflows at the same time. Rather than filling in the form once per person or event, you upload a CSV (spreadsheet) containing one row per workflow. To create a CSV, open your spreadsheet tool (Excel or Google Sheets) and choose File → Export / Download → CSV. As part of the process of preparing your batch, Arbor workflows has a downloadable CSV template. This template allows you to get a CSV with this workflow’s starting-form columns, plus a school column to fill in for each row.
If the workflow is deployed across more than one school in a MAT, Arbor Workflows needs to know which school each row relates to. Include a column titled Organisation containing the school name exactly as listed in Arbor Workflows or Arbor MIS.
Before you start
- The workflow must be live. Start from spreadsheet isn't available for draft workflows. To make a draft live, open it in the builder, select Review and test, then Go live.
- The workflow must start with a form. This is the Trigger form (step 1 in the builder).
- Only questions marked Required are mapped, so any question you want to fill from your CSV must be set to required.
Preparing the CSV
Ensuring your CSV is formatted correctly is really important. Because of this, as part of the process of preparing your batch, Arbor workflows has a downloadable CSV template. This template allows you to get a CSV with this workflow’s starting-form columns, plus a school column to fill in for each row.
Alternatively, you might want to create your own. All data you would like to use to trigger your workflow should in the CSV. Give your column headers relevant names, as you will be using those names to map to the questions on your form. Each question on your form should match to a relevant column on your CSV. For example, if your form asks for the user’s first name, ensure you have a column entitled First Name that contains all of the relevant data! Once you’re happy, download the file as a CSV (comma separated file), and go into the workflow editor for the workflow you want to trigger.
Start the workflows
You can launch your workflows to multiple recipients in 2 different ways. Choose either route:
1. From the Workflows page
Go to Workflows.
Find your live workflow in the table, hoover over to highlight the workflow row and select its three-dot menu.
Select Start from spreadsheet. This will open an area for you to prepare your batch launch.
2. From Workflow forms
Go to Workflow forms.
Select Start workflow on the workflow you want. This will open a pop up allowing you to trigger a single workflow run. At the bottom of this pop-up is Start in bulk.
Select Start in bulk. you will be taken to the area to prepare batch.
Both of these routes will bring you to the same area to prepare your batch, match your columns, match your cell data, run setting and check and start your workflows.
Note: If you don't see Start from spreadsheet, check the workflow's status. It only appears for live workflows, not drafts.
Prepare batch
Whether you are using the downloadable CSV template or creating your own, you will be asked to match the column headings from your CSV with the questions from the Trigger Form. To start this process you will need to upload your spreadsheet.
Once you have selected your CSV. to upload, you will see the file with the amount of records within it. The amount of records will be the amount of workflow runs this trigger will create. This bulk trigger can only launch up to 500 records at a time - you will need to repeat this process with different CSV files if running this for over 500 records.
You can now select Match columns.
Match Columns
This will open the next screen within the start from spreadsheet process. This screen will recommend from your trigger form what areas it will pull the data from but it is recommended you check these.
If any of these are incorrect, you can select the down arrow in the 'Map to field' column and select where to pull this from.
Once you have matched all the questions with the columns in the CSV, you can select Match cell data.
Match Cell data
This will bring you to the next step in preparing to start from spreadsheet. if you have accidentally uploaded the template CSV rather than the completed one, as in this example, you will be asked to fix them.
Once you have uploaded the completed CSV, or if you had no errors. You can now select Run settings.
Run settings
With Run settings you can configure the Run mode. You can run and Test of the batch or launch straight into Live. Testing will create a test workflow run for each record in your CSV, in our example this would be 18 workflow runs.
in this example because the workflow was tested in the build process, I am not going to test the bulk launch. Selecting Live in the Run mode will update the screen.
Running Live with launch this bulk workflow using the workflow's configured recipients and actions, drawing contextually on your organisations settings where applicable.
From here, you can also choose to launch the workflows now, or, schedule for later. If starting now, select Check and Start. If scheduling for later, you will be prompted to set the date and time this should launch.
Once you have configured this, if scheduling for later, Check and start will become clickable and you can proceed.
Check and start
This area will confirm the details of the trigger.
Once you have checked the details you can select Start live runs to launch your workflow into motion. From here you can track the workflow runs in the standard way.
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