Beginner's guide to workflows: building a new starter onboarding flow

Workflows let you automate the sequence of steps that your team runs the same way every time. Instead of an HR admin manually chasing a manager, booking a meeting, logging into Trelica, and creating documents—the workflow does it, pausing only when a human decision is actually needed.

This guide builds a complete new starter onboarding workflow from scratch. The same ideas apply to any repeatable process.

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Why use a workflow at all?

Chat is great for one-off questions. Workflows are for repeatable, multi-step processes where:

• Several different people need to be contacted in sequence.
• You need to wait for replies before taking the next action.
• Actions span multiple systems (HRIS, calendar, provisioning tools, documents).
• You want an audit trail of what happened and when.

Without a workflow, onboarding typically means tabs open across five systems and an HR admin keeping everything in their head. With a workflow, the same outcome happens consistently—and you can see exactly where each run is at any time.

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The example we'll build

When a new starter record is created, the workflow should:

1. Contact the hiring manager to ask for first-day logistics and confirm the probation review date.
2. Contact the IT lead to ask about equipment and system access requirements.
3. Send a calendar invite for the 3-month probation review.
4. Call a webhook to provision the new starter's accounts in Trelica.
5. Generate the new starter welcome document and attach it to the ticket.

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Step 1: Choose the right trigger

The workflow should fire as soon as a new starter record exists—not when someone remembers to kick it off manually.

The right trigger here is a webhook: your HRIS sends a request to Harriet when the new starter record is created, including the employee's name, email, start date, manager, and department.

If your HRIS does not support webhooks, a ticket trigger works well too—HR creates a ticket in a New Starters inbox and the workflow fires automatically on arrival.

To set this up: ask IT to register the Harriet webhook URL in your HRIS and confirm which fields are sent in the payload. Those fields (name, email, manager email, start date) become variables you can reference throughout the workflow.

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Step 2: Author the agent step

Most of the work in this workflow is done by a configurable agent step—you describe what you want in plain language and the agent works out how to do it using the skills you give it.

When you add the step, you fill in four fields:

Goal

"Complete all onboarding tasks for {employee_name} who starts on {start_date}, reporting to {manager_email}."

How

"Work through the tasks in order. Contact the hiring manager first, then IT. Book the probation review only once the manager has confirmed the date. Do not provision Trelica or generate the document until you have the IT requirements back. Always attach outputs to the ticket."

When to stop

"Stop when all five tasks are complete: manager contacted and replied, IT contacted and replied, calendar invite sent, Trelica webhook called, welcome document generated and attached."

On error

"Post an internal note on the ticket listing which steps succeeded and which failed, and assign to the HR ops team."

Keep each instruction specific. The more precisely you describe the expected order and conditions, the more reliably the agent follows it.

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Step 3: Assign the right skills

Skills are the toolsets the agent can use. Assign only what this step needs—unused skills are extra surface area with no benefit.

For this workflow, you need:

• Agentic data gathering — to contact the hiring manager and IT lead and wait for their replies.
• Calendar — to create the probation review invite.
• Webhook — to call the Trelica provisioning endpoint.
• Document generation — to produce the welcome pack.
• Ticket management — to post updates and attach the document to the ticket.

Your IT admin assigns these skills to the workflow step in the workflow builder. If a skill you need is not available, IT may need to enable it or configure an MCP integration first.

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Step 4: Reach out to stakeholders for information

The agent needs information from the hiring manager and IT lead before it can complete the later steps. It gathers this using the Agentic data gathering skill, which lets Harriet contact people via Slack DM or email and wait for their reply.

What happens:

1. The agent looks up the hiring manager's Slack channel or email.
2. It sends a message asking for the first-day logistics and confirming the probation review date. For example:

   "Hi Alex, {employee_name} is joining on {start_date} reporting to you. Could you confirm: (1) the time and location for their first day, and (2) which date works best for their 3-month probation review?"

3. The workflow pauses while it waits for Alex's reply.
4. When Alex replies, the agent reads the answer and moves on—asking a follow-up only if the reply is incomplete.
5. The same process repeats for the IT lead.

The contacted people receive a normal Slack DM or email. They reply as they normally would. Harriet handles the conversation, asks follow-ups if needed, and returns a clean summary to the next step.

Security note: the data-gathering agent cannot access your HR systems or knowledge base—it can only send messages and receive replies. This means Harriet cannot accidentally share sensitive employee data with the contacts it messages.

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Step 5: Pause until something happens

There are two kinds of pause in this workflow:

Outreach pause (waiting for a person to reply)
The workflow stops while waiting for the hiring manager or IT lead to respond. There is no timeout by default—if someone does not reply, the workflow stays paused. Set up a sub-agent timeout so the workflow fails gracefully and posts an alert to the ticket if no reply arrives within (for example) 48 hours.

Approval pause (before an irreversible action)
The Trelica webhook call provisions real accounts. If you want a human check before that happens, configure the webhook tool to require confirmation—the workflow will pause and show an Approve button on the ticket before calling the endpoint. Tick this option in the skill's tool settings in Company settings → Integrations.

After each pause, the agent resumes with full context of everything that happened before—previous replies, prior steps completed, the original webhook payload. You do not need to repeat information.

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Step 6: Putting it together

Here is what the finished workflow looks like end-to-end:

Trigger: HRIS webhook fires when new starter record is created.

1. Agent contacts hiring manager via Slack → pauses → resumes when manager replies with first-day info and probation date.
2. Agent contacts IT lead via email → pauses → resumes when IT replies with equipment and access requirements.
3. Agent creates calendar invite for probation review using confirmed date and attendees.
4. Agent calls Trelica webhook to provision accounts → pauses for approval if confirmation is required → continues after approval.
5. Agent generates welcome document using the employee's details and onboarding information.
6. Agent attaches the document to the ticket and posts a summary: all tasks complete.

Total hands-on time for HR: zero—unless the workflow pauses for an approval or someone does not reply.

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Guardrails

• Test in a pilot inbox first. Create a test new starter record and run the workflow end-to-end before enabling on real starters. Pay close attention to the pause/resume paths.
• Write an on-error path. If the HRIS webhook sends unexpected fields, or a skill is unavailable, the agent should post a clear internal note rather than silently stopping.
• Set sub-agent timeouts. Any step that waits for a person should have a timeout so stuck runs are surfaced to your team, not ignored.
• Keep instructions specific. "Do the onboarding" is too vague. "Contact the hiring manager first, then IT, then book the calendar invite only after both have replied" gives the agent a clear path to follow.
• Review skill assignments regularly. If the Trelica integration changes or the IT lead's contact details move to a different system, update the workflow instructions and skill config accordingly.