WORKFLOW AUTOMATION PLANNING WORKSHEET
ShowMeYourSaaS — October 26, 2026
Guide: https://showmeyoursaas.com/articles/workflow-automation/
Local lab: https://showmeyoursaas.com/resources/workflow-automation-lab.mjs

ONE WORKFLOW
Recurring job and current manual process:
Trigger: event or schedule:
Authorized input source and schema:
Current-state lookup needed at execution time:
Eligibility and suppression conditions:
Output and its destination:
Human review before external effects:
Owner and operating budget:

ORIGINAL BLUEPRINTS IN THE LAB
submission.received → acknowledgment draft for review
trial.check → activation-help draft only while eligible and contact permitted
invoice.failed → billing review only while current state is past_due
support.created → support routing using a validated explicit priority
weekly.review → a draft metric review for a completed reporting window
listing.approved → a rebuild proposal only while approval remains true
account.canceled → a cancellation-review draft only when follow-up is permitted

The lab uses normalized internal events, not provider webhook payloads.
It uses synthetic data, keeps duplicate memory only within one invocation, and
does not access the network, credentials, files, email, or live accounts.
Default input: 10 deliveries. Expected: 7 queued, 1 duplicate, 2 suppressed.
Queued proposals in this exercise are not executed external actions.

DUPLICATES AND DURABILITY
Provider delivery/event identifier:
Business effect identifier (for equivalent actions from distinct events):
Durable receipt and effect ledger:
Atomic queue/ledger operation or recovery strategy:
When the effect becomes completed:
How a failed action remains eligible for bounded recovery:
What happens after a worker restart:

FAILURE PATH
Temporary versus permanent failure classification:
Retry ceiling, backoff, and maximum elapsed time:
Exhausted-work destination and alert owner:
Minimal permitted diagnostic context:
Manual recovery and disabling mechanism:

TEST INPUTS
Valid ordinary event:
Duplicate of an already-completed event:
Different event describing an already-completed business effect:
Stale event after the account's state changes:
Missing required data or unknown type:
Simulated action failure followed by a retry:
Restart after effect creation but before completion acknowledgment:

For each: expected decision / actual decision / duplicate effect count /
remaining queue item / evidence / reviewer.

OPERATING REVIEW
Baseline manual minutes and completed jobs:
Automated valid completions:
Suppressed, duplicate, failed, and manually corrected cases:
Review/maintenance minutes and direct operating costs:
Evidence that the output is useful:
Continue, revise, or stop; owner and next review date:

Follow the actual provider's signature verification, event schema, retries, and
permission model for production integrations. Technical sources are in the guide.