Map events and responsibilities
Start with the trigger, the records involved and the outcome. In an onboarding workflow, a signed proposal may create a client record and project. Identify who owns the proposal status, what approval is required and which system stores the authoritative client details. This makes the process understandable before any tools are connected.
Make repeated events safe
An integration may receive the same submission more than once, or retry after a timeout. Use a stable identifier to recognise work already completed and prevent duplicate records. Define what happens when a request succeeds in one system but fails in the next. Recovery should resume from a known point rather than blindly repeating every action.
Route incomplete information for review
Validate required fields before moving a record forward. If a document is missing or a value conflicts with an existing record, give the exception an owner and a status. Preserve the original submission and the reason it stopped. The reviewer should have enough context to resolve it without reconstructing the workflow from several inboxes.
Treat approvals as workflow steps
Where a person must approve an action, record the decision against the correct version of the work. Define what happens if information changes after approval, the approver is unavailable or the request expires. An approval notification is only useful when it leads to a clear decision and the workflow responds to that decision consistently.
Plan for operation after launch
Monitor failures, ageing tasks and repeated exceptions. Agree how many retries are appropriate, when to alert a person and how to recover during an outage. Track cycle time and manual interventions against the original process. Review maintenance needs when connected systems, permissions or business rules change.
A USEFUL STARTING POINT