Admin should be able to activate automations for their team
I'm new to using PipeDrive Automations. Can someone at PipeDrive PLEASE explain to me, when I as an Admin create an automated workflow that all members of my team must use, why EVERY user has to go in and accept/activate EACH automation??? It isn't their choice whether they want to use it or not… it's our PROCESS that all users must use for consistency and an Admin should be able to activate the workflow for everyone. It's a huge waste of time that I have to send an email to each team member telling them step by step the name(s) of each automation, where to find them, and how to activate them. Waste of time that they have to go in and activate them. Waste of time that I have to follow up with the ones who didn't activate them. Please tell me why PipeDrive thinks it makes sense that an Admin should not be able to activate workflows/automations for their team. Thank you.
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hi @JB04 there's a difference between date triggered and event triggered activities. event activities can be activated for all users with "triggered by anyone" setting. date triggers need to be activated by each user individually. thats just a very unfortunate way of how date based automations work currently.
i do agree - @Manuel Oliveira its actually super inconvenient as many pipedrive users are unfamiliar with workflow automations and an admin usually understands when date based workflows should trigger for all or specific users. this creates unnecessary friction and additional work to chase users
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Hi @Nikolai Sokolov that's a good point. I double-checked with our automations team, who confirmed this is an intentional decision to introduce security by design. Such as to prevent cases in which an ill-intentioned team member with admin permissions would cause problems for another user. Here's an example that this mechanism is designed to prevent, considering an admin and a regular user:
1- The admin user creates an automation that, when a deal is updated, sends a malicious email to the deal's contact person.
2- The admin user also assigns the automation to a regular user without their knowledge.
3—The regular user updates a deal. The automation then triggers and sends the malicious email to the deal contact from their own email account. This happens without the regular user being aware of it.
4- Finally, the admin removes the automation and any traces of wrongdoing.
Bear in mind that automations set to be triggered by any user are different since they’re executed from the automation owner’s account, and not the users who trigger it.
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Ridiculous! There's a SLIM chance that your scenario would happen… certainly not enough to make it such a difficult process for ALL of your clients! The reason we don't want to make all automations available to all users IS because of what you described… because then ANY user COULD trigger the automation, even users who the automation isn't intended for! We want to control who is able to trigger the automation and we're intelligent enough to assign it to exactly who should be able to trigger it… and they should NOT have to accept our standardized process!
A process with 15 automations means EVERY USER has to go in and accept ALL 15 automations! The likelihood that they will overlook one or more is HIGH. Plus the complete waste of time and lost productivity for my team. I should be able to assign automated workflows for my team without their approval. Period.
PipeDrive seems insistent on ignoring common sense requests from their clients. Another reason to look for a different CRM.
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Hi @Manuel Oliveira here's why I think it does more harm than being useful:
- I can think of 100 other ways to trigger malicious stuff employing the usual event trigger and "triggered by anyone" setting
- I can think of another 1000 ways using make or zapier and not leaving any trace in pipedrive in the first place
In all instances, an admin account will suffice. The current limitation is really something thats just annoying and "other CRMs solved better".
At the end of the day, having this limitation on date based workflows wont avoid trouble of granting admin privileges to the wrong people. But does create problems for everyone else.
Big hopes the team will recognize this just as it recognized the incredibly limiting setting for webhooks in workflows when they were first released. Those were unusable for similar reasons.
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@JB04 @Nikolai Sokolov thank you for sharing your use cases. I have converted this post to product feedback so that it reaches our product team.
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In comparison, HubSpot doesnt even have a setting for "this user / some users / just those who activate". Because that can be achieved with conditions. Admin access implies high risk and responsibility and is something account owners need to consider carefully.
Another feature of HubSpot that helps monitoring whats happening are detailed logs that cant be deleted or altered. With details of each execution (including deleted workflows), as well as configurable notifications. Much better security by design :)
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Thank you Nikolai for understanding PD user's frustration when it comes to automations and there are many. It's one of the reason we have been exploring other CRMs. My issue with automations is not only the fact that with date triggers you need opt-ins, but in order for automations that contain sending emails you must have those also be triggered by user if you want emails to be sent from the actual user and not a company email. Guess what, when I set some automations up as an admin that needed users to opt-in, only 1 single team member could figure out how to opt in and only one did.
We need emails sent out to clients at various stages of our Pipelines and this should come from the user the client is working with for many obvious reasons. In order for that to happen each team member on our team needs to opt-in, many team members are not tech savvy and don't understand how or why to opt-in.
I have another CRM that I use for another job that is amazing and I wish it wasn't only for real estate or I would have encourage our company CEO to switch to that. All campaigns and automations are sent from the contact owners email and it's basically the default setting unless the admin changes it. This way clients/leads can reply directly to the correct person. I think the reasoning of sabotage automations or emails for putting up this roadblock is bizarre, anyone at the admin level most likely would also be adversely affected if some sort of weird email went out, so the chance of them purposely setting something up like that is very low. It should be up to the account owner whether to allow it or not, not PD.
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@Manuel Oliveira this is another biggie - not being able to set up the "from" section to "user triggering the workflow".
That and the fact that email actions generally dont work if too many deals enter the automation too fast (the email sendouts will just abort) makes automating emails extremely challenging.
Same for date based triggers. If 10+ deals enter the automation on the same day for one user, the email sendout will break after 4-5 emails. No reruns, no solution other than "send them manually" or "call our make.com guys to sort this out".
Batch emailing / email functionality in pipedrive is generally a great UVP. The way automations work with emails — huge bummer.
Our onboarding convos go from "its regular emails and is great!" to "no, this won't work in workflow automation" 9 out of 10 times.
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the problem with automations breaking after a handful of sendouts can be solved if any workflow automation with email steps
- enters in a queue-based manner, with a delay of 10-30 secs
This can happen in the backend without any settings. Email step? Delay enrollment by 10-30 secs.
this will ensure there's enough delay to make email sends work, as each item gets processed with a gap of 10-30 secs between them.
No harm in doing it since workflows just break currently after 4-5 emails = worse outcome than a delayed process.
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