Workflows

A workflow guide follows one job from start to finish across several parts of Bulk. Bulk is organized into modules — distinct areas such as Production, Quality, and Finance — and most real work touches more than one of them. These guides walk the whole path in order, so you can see how the pieces fit together instead of learning one screen at a time.

Each workflow guide is a map, not a rulebook. It explains the sequence and the hand-offs between modules, then links to the product reference — the canonical, single-screen guide for each step — where the detailed instructions live. Read a workflow when you want the shape of the whole process; follow its links when you need the exact clicks for one screen.

When to use these guides

Bulk documentation lets you approach the same material in different ways. Use a workflow guide when you care about the end-to-end path; use one of the others when you have a narrower need:

• Workflows (this section) — the full journey across modules, in order. Start here when you are learning how a whole process runs, or handing one off between people.
• Getting started — how to create or access your account, sign in, choose your site, and navigate the interface. Start here if Bulk is new to you.
• Browse by role — the workflows and reference pages that matter most to your job, whether you are an administrator, manager, operator, quality or safety team member, people and training coordinator, or in finance.
• Product reference — the task-by-task guide for a single module. This is where each feature is documented in full; the workflow guides link here rather than repeat the steps.

The workflow guides

The guides are grouped into five stages of running a plant. Open a group to see its journeys, or jump straight to a single journey.

Setup and connect

Get a new organization or site ready to use, and connect Bulk to the other systems your plant relies on. See the group overview: Setup and connect.

• Set up a new organization or site — configure a plant from scratch: its master data, team, and access.
• Automate and integrate safely — connect Bulk to other tools and set up automation without disrupting live work.

Plan and produce

Turn incoming customer work into jobs on the shop floor, run those jobs, and keep materials flowing. See the group overview: Plan and produce.

• Turn customer work into production — take a customer request through to raised orders and jobs. An order is the manufacturing work Bulk tracks against a customer request; a job is one unit of that work carried out at a workstation.
• Prepare and run a workstation safely — set up a workstation (a place on the shop floor, tied to equipment, where operators book jobs) and run work through it.
• Manage materials through production — track stock and consumables as production draws them down.

Quality and compliance

Deal with problems on the floor and keep the record that proves you handled them. See the group overview: Quality and compliance.

• Resolve a quality problem — log a quality issue and work it through to a resolution.
• Manage safety risk — record incidents and run the risk reviews that keep people safe.
• Run a compliance audit program — schedule and complete the checks — such as 5S, pre-use, and quality audits — that keep your plant compliant.

People and training

Keep your team, their skills, and their availability aligned with the work. See the group overview: People and training.

• Manage workforce readiness — manage employees, absences, and the training records that show who is qualified to do what.

Insights and finance

Turn the day-to-day records your plant creates into visibility for managers and into invoices for finance. See the group overview: Insights and finance.

• Turn operations into management visibility — surface shop-floor activity as dashboards and reports leadership can act on.
• Close the commercial loop — take completed production through to invoicing.

An example path through Granite Peak Manufacturing

Granite Peak Manufacturing, a precision-fabrication company, runs Bulk across its plants, including the Leeds Fabrication Plant. A single customer order can travel through several of these guides in turn.

A customer orders a batch of laser-cut steel brackets. A production supervisor follows Turn customer work into production to raise the order and its jobs. On the shop floor, an operator follows Prepare and run a workstation safely to book the cutting job and record what they produce. One batch fails inspection, so the quality team follows Resolve a quality problem to log and close out the defect. At month-end, finance follows Close the commercial loop to turn the completed work into an invoice. Each guide ends where the next one begins, and everyone works from the same set of records for the same plant.

What you can see depends on your access

Bulk shows only the modules and sites your role — the set of permissions attached to your account — allows. A workflow guide may cross an area you cannot open yet. If a step, module, or site named in a guide is missing for you, your role may not include that area, or you may not have access to that site.

If that happens, ask an administrator, or use your organization's access-request process to request the site or area you need. Administrators can review what each role grants in roles and permissions.

This is not the same as Workflow automation

In this documentation, "Workflows" means these cross-module journey guides. That is different from Bulk's Workflows automation feature — a separate tool, found under Settings › Organization › Workflows, that runs no-code automations (triggers and rules) inside your plant. That feature is in Beta: it works, but it is still being refined and its behavior may change. To configure it, see Manage workflow automation.

Related

• Administration — configure your organization, sites, master data, and access.
• Integrations — connect Bulk to other systems, such as the REST API and Microsoft Dynamics 365.