Daily use

Process documentation · your company's procedures

Processes is the standard object where a company writes down its own procedures: closing the register, handling returns, hiring, month-end. Each document has an area, an owner, a version and a status, so you always know what is in effect and what went obsolete. It is the operational memory that usually lives in loose files.

Almost every company has a process document somewhere: a text file in someone's cloud drive, a notepad, the head of the longest-serving employee. Writing it was never the problem. Knowing which version applies today and who answers for it is. The Processes object puts those documents inside the CRM, with an explicit version and status, right next to the data they govern.

Where it lives

In the menu, under the Analytics & governance group, open Processes. The list shows the columns Process, Area, Version and Status. You can also view it as a board, grouped by Status.

The document's fields

Process: the name of the procedure. It is required and it is the record's title.
Area: Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, Finance, HR, Operations or IT. It starts out as Operations.
Summary: what it is for and when it applies.
Steps: the step-by-step itself.
Owner: who maintains the document. It is a text field.
Version: starts at 1.0 and you update it by hand at every meaningful revision.
Status: Draft, In effect, Under review or Obsolete. It is required and starts out as Draft.

Writing and maintaining

Under Processes, click New.
Fill in Process, pick the Area and write the Summary and the Steps.
Enter the Owner and leave the Version at 1.0.
Save. While the text is still maturing, keep the Status at Draft.
When the procedure takes effect, change the Status to In effect.
When you revise it later, set it to Under review, adjust the text, bump the Version to 1.1 or 2.0 and set it back to In effect.
A procedure that fell out of use becomes Obsolete, not deleted: the history stays available.

Example: Bandeirantes Hardware documented Daily register close, Area Finance, Owner Marina Alves, Version 1.0, Status In effect, with nine steps, from counting cash pulls to posting the difference. When the company started accepting instant payments, the document went to Under review, gained two steps, became Version 1.1 and went back to In effect. The older document is still in the record's history.

Getting more out of it

Filter the list by Area to give each team its own shelf.
Filter by Status equals In effect and save it as a view: that is the list that applies today.
Use tags to mark themes that cut across areas, such as audit or month-end close.
Global search with ⌘K finds a process by name from any screen.

Processes, Knowledge base or Playbooks

Processes: an internal operating procedure, for your team to follow.
Knowledge base: a help article, written for the customer and publishable on the public Help Center.
Playbooks: relationship and Customer Success scripts, tied to the day-to-day work with accounts.

Permissions and limits

Viewing, creating and editing follow your role's rules for the Processes object.
Administrators can add fields, change the Area and Status options and adjust the list under Settings.
Version is a text field you control: the system does not number it for you and does not lock editing on a document that is In effect.
Deleting sends the document to the Trash, where it stays for thirty days and can be restored.

Common questions

Who changed the text yesterday? Open the record and look at the change history, as with any object.
Can I attach the signed PDF of the procedure? Yes, use the record's attachments.
Can I publish a process for customers to read? This object is internal. If the content is for customers, write an article in the Knowledge base and publish it there.

Open this article inside the system →