8 ways we’re improving Arbor Workflows

October 2026

We’re giving Arbor Workflows a makeover. It’s the same functionality, helping you to automate your work but with a whole new design, making it easier to start, build, edit and test your workflows.

We’ve spent some time listening to what Arbor Workflows users wanted, and our latest improvements are designed to help you get started, and continue with automation in Arbor.

We will launch these changes at the start of November, the planned date for launch is Tuesday November 3rd.

This article covers what will change, what will stay the same and what you need to know.

What hasn't changed

While frequent users of Arbor Workflows will notice some obvious differences to the design of the module, it’s important to understand the core functionality remains the same and we haven’t taken anything away. 

• Your existing workflows will keep running as they did before. 
• User roles and permissions are the same. See School MIS and MAT MIS Business Roles and Arbor Workflow Permissions.
• You can do all the things you could do before, but you might find a button has moved or is called something slightly different now. 

Everything we’ve changed in the product aims to make it easier for people to get started with workflows, and give you confidence to run a workflow in your school or trust. 

Let’s explore what’s changed. 

1. A new side navigation menu

Aside from the fact the colours have changed, the first thing you will probably notice is that the main menu has moved from the top of the screen to the side. You can now use the sidebar to access each section of Arbor Workflows. 

Looking at the sidebar, You might notice:

• My Things is now called My Tasks. It works the same way, but it’s a clearer label.
• Activity, where you can keep track of workflows, can now be found via the workflows tab. Just select the workflow in the table and click ‘Activity’ to see the workflow runs  for each Workflow.
• We’ve introduced a new Workflow forms item in the side menu (see point 2) where you can see the workflows you are able to kick off.
  
   

2. Clearer, friendlier language

We've rewritten several of the labels and prompts across Arbor Workflows in plain language. If you are an experienced workflows wizard, you might want to take a moment to familiarise yourself with these new labels.  Here are the main changes

3. Workflow forms

It’s often useful to start a workflow with a form. For example, you may wish for a parent, or teacher for example to complete a form which sets off a series of automations. 

Trigger forms (the forms which begin a workflow) used to live under My Things. Now they have their own area called Workflow forms. We’ve created this new area because users told us they wanted a library of all their live trigger forms, so that users can easily find the form they need to initiate a workflow. When you’re in Workflow forms, you can see or search for a form. 

When you build a workflow with a trigger form, you can decide if you would like the forms to show in this Workflow forms area. To do so, open the specific workflow, via Workflows, go to Review and Test, and switch on the form visibility toggle. Switching this on means that the trigger form will display in the Workflow forms area.

To share a form somewhere else, like your website or a staff page, open the workflow from the Workflows tab and use Copy links.

4. A new Template Library

We’ve made a few improvements when selecting a template too. When you start a workflow from a template, you now open a full library.

• You can search for a template, or filter by category.
• Click a template to see every step before you add it. You'll know exactly what it does and who's involved.

After you add a template, check who does each step. Templates use common school roles. If a role isn't set up in your school, the Review and Test function will flag this to you. Don’t be alarmed, it’s telling you no one is set up with that role, so you can pick the right person. 

5. Build one step at a time

A big change we’ve made to Arbor Workflows is the design of the workflow builder. 

The builder used to show all of your steps in one long page, one after the other. It often required users to scroll up and down the page and locate the part of the workflow they wanted to edit. We’ve made the workflow builder much easier to use.

The builder now lists each step of your workflow in the sidebar so you can see all the steps you need on one side, as you edit one step at a time. Click any step in the list to jump straight to it. No more scrolling.

6. Tags are now Dynamic Data

Dynamic Data pulls relevant information through your workflow, like a student's name or a date, so your messages and workflow steps are tailored to the context. For example, you might want to choose who completes a certain step by adding a selecting a role from Dynamic Data. Or you may wish to say who should provide information at a step in your workflow. Dynamic Data used to be known as Tags, and we’ve made some improvements.

There are lots of ways to add Dynamic Data and lots of data to choose from to contextualise your workflows.  However, we’ve made it clearer what Dynamic Data is available by categorising the data in the data picker into groups. We’ve also added a search to make data tags easier to find.

You can now also add Dynamic Data quickly by simply using the @ symbol and type the data field you want to include. This is useful if you know which field you want already – you don’t have to browse or search for it.

7. Review and Test

Testing your workflow is important, but we realised that the testing function was not easy to find. Previously, the Publish button would have delivered a pop-up from where you would have selected the Test action. We’ve now introduced a full page dedicated to Testing, called Review and Test. All your settings are now on one page, with clearer labelling. 

From here you can configure your settings before you push the workflow live, including which schools can use the workflow, who can manage or follow a workflow, and what appears when someone views a workflow run. 

Once you are happy with this, you can opt to Test the workflow which will take you the Trigger form to fill it in as if you were kicking off the workflow. The steps of the workflow that require someone to complete a task (like a Form, Checklist or Decision) will go to you as the tester, and can be found in your My Tasks area. 

You can also track the progress of your test by looking up the workflow runs for that workflow and following along. Please note, any steps to add data to Arbor or a spreadsheet will actually add that data so you can see how it is sent and to where. If this is test data please delete it once the test is finished. 

When you're ready, press Go live. This button was previously ‘Publish’.

8. The ‘Storage’ step is now the ‘Document’ step

Same step, new name. The Document step is for MATs on the MAT Advanced package and it saves documents from your workflow into a SharePoint or Google Drive folder of your choice -  just create a workflow and let other people write documents and data back to your Cloud-based drives.