Library Processes

A library is a ProcessPlan account that publishes processes and AI Employee jobs for other accounts to use. A franchise can run one for its offices; an industry body can run one for its members; ProcessPlan runs one for everyone. When your account belongs to a library, its published processes appear in your library catalogue, and you can bring one into your account as a package.

A process you import this way is a copy in your own account, but it remembers where it came from. The steps, responses, fields and automations the library built keep a link back to the library and to the revision you imported. Everything else about the process is yours.

Browsing the catalogue

To open the catalogue, choose Library Catalogue on the toolbar of your Template Diagrams list.

The catalogue lists each library your account can see, with that library’s published processes and AI Employee jobs. For each process you see its name, a one-line summary from the library, its keywords, the revision number, and what the package holds: how many fields, steps, automations, AI Employee jobs and subprocesses. You can search the catalogue by name, summary or keyword. A process you have already imported shows Open Your Copy instead of Import, because your account keeps one copy of each library process.

A library decides who may import each process. A process can be offline while the library works on it, open to a few named accounts first, or open to every account that can see the library. You only see what is open to you.

Importing a process

Importing brings the library’s published revision into your account. Choose Import on the process in the catalogue. If the process launches other processes as subprocesses, or looks values up in another library process, tick those processes in the import window so they come in at the same time: links between them are only kept when they arrive in the same package.

Nothing is added unless everything copies. If the package would lose anything, ProcessPlan refuses the import and tells you what would have been lost, so you never end up with half a process.

After a successful import you get a short setup list: the things that belong to your account and so never travel with a package. Work through it before you start the process:

Who does each step. Assign the people or teams in your office. A step the library gives to an AI Employee goes to your own AI Employees; if the library named one, choose which of yours does it.
Which AI Employee runs each automated step. Choose one of your own AI Employees.
Login details for AI Employee jobs. A library job that signs in to a website expects one of your account’s secrets in its login slot. Until you pick one, that step waits.
Webhook secrets and similar settings that must be your own.

A library’s AI Employee job is not copied into your account. Your process runs the library’s job, so when the library improves the job, your process gets the improvement on its next run.

What you can change, and what the library keeps

The rule is simple: everything that came from the library stays the library’s and cannot be changed in your copy, and everything you add is yours. The exceptions are the things only your office can know, such as who does the work, and where things sit on your screen.

Part	The library keeps	You can change
A step	That it exists, its name, its instructions, its due dates, its checklist and the files attached to it, and that an AI Employee does it when the library gives it to one	Who does it (for a step the library gives to an AI Employee, which of your AI Employees), whether they are emailed when it reaches them, whether it can be handed to someone else, its work schedule, where it sits in the flow, its time estimate, your own fields on its form, and your own steps before, after and beside it
A response	That it exists, its name and what it does	Where it points next, its order and colour, and your own responses
A field	Everything about it, including a drop-down’s choices	The order of its choices, who it offers when it lists people, your own fields, and how fields are arranged on forms
An automated action	The action itself, what triggers it, its conditions, its settings, and whether it is on	The values your setup list asks for, such as its AI Employee, its login, who it sends to, a Slack channel, the person or group a condition names, or its work schedule; any setting the library has opened to its offices; and your own automations on any step
An AI Employee job	The job the step runs	Which of your AI Employees runs it, and its login details
The process	Its name, description and instructions	Who may see, start and edit it, where it is filed, and whether changes reach records already running
The diagram	Every library step and response stays in it	Every link, including the links between library steps

A library can open a particular setting of one of its automations to its offices, such as the wording of an email. You can change that setting’s value in your copy, but you cannot remove the setting, and no other setting opens unless the library opens it.

A step, response, field or automated action that came from the library says so in a note at the top of its settings, with what stays the library’s and what you can change.

If you try to delete a library step, response, field or automated action, or change anything the library keeps, such as a step’s name or due date, a field’s type, or handing a step the library gives to an AI Employee to a person, ProcessPlan tells you it came from your library and leaves it as it was. If your office needs something different, add your own step, field or automation beside the library’s.

To take work past a library step, give the step before it a response of your own that leads past it, and choose that response instead. For example, if the library’s “Called” response leads to “File it” and your office does not file, add your own “Skip filing” response to the step before “File it” and point it at the next step. The library step stays in the diagram, because every step in a process must be reachable from its start, but no work goes through it.

The AI Strategist and the AI Assistant follow the same rule. In a library process, the AI Strategist never proposes removing a library step, giving a step the library hands to an AI Employee to a person, or rating a library response, though it can still tell you what it notices about them. If you ask the AI Assistant to remove or rename a library step, or to change a library field’s settings, it tells you before anything is saved that the part belongs to your library, and offers the way around it.

When the library updates a process

When the library publishes a new revision of a process you imported, your copy picks it up by itself, once a day. The library’s parts change to match the new revision. Everything that is yours stays as it is: who does each step, your work schedules, the values you filled in from the setup list, any setting the library opened to you, your own steps, fields and automations, and how you arranged them.

Some examples of what an update does:

A renamed step, or new instructions or due dates are changed in your copy.
A new library step goes straight after the step it follows in the library. If you had put your own steps there, they now come after the new library step.
A new response, field or automation is added to your copy.
A step, field or automation the library retires stays in your copy as your own, complete with its checklist, choices, settings and conditions. If nothing in your process leads to a retired step any more, it leaves the diagram.

An update is a new version of your process, so your process’s own setting decides whether it reaches records that are already running, exactly as when you change the process yourself.

To see where your copy stands, open the process’s diagram and choose Library from its ⋮ menu. The Library panel shows which revision your copy follows, whether its last update landed, is waiting or did not finish, and the note saying why. To pick up a new revision straight away instead of waiting for the daily update, choose Check for Updates there. The panel then lists what changed, anything the update is waiting on, and anything new you need to set up.

When an update waits

Sometimes an update cannot be placed without a decision only you can make. Your copy then stays on the revision it has and shows a note saying why. The most common reason: you pointed one of the library’s responses somewhere of your own, and the library has changed where that response leads too. Point the response back, or tell your library, and the update goes ahead next time.

An update also waits when the library has changed the process’s documents, JavaScript functions, PDF templates, public forms, attached files or subprocess steps, which updates cannot carry yet. Nothing in your copy changes while it waits, and nobody is emailed.

Taking a process off the library

You can take an imported process off the library: choose Take Off the Library in the process’s Library panel, and confirm. Every link to the library is cut, and the process becomes entirely yours: you can change or delete any part of it, and it no longer receives updates. Its AI Employee steps keep running the library’s jobs, so they still get the library’s fixes.

This cannot be undone. The only way back is to import the process again, which makes a second, separate copy. Like importing, it needs the Import From Library permission.

If your account stops being a member of a library, or the library retires a process you imported, your copy is taken off the library for you. It keeps running as your own process, with a note saying why.

What your library sees

Each imported process tells its library how it is doing: when you import it, after each daily update, and when it is taken off the library. Your library sees:

your account’s name;
which revision your copy is on;
whether its last update landed, is waiting, or did not finish, with the note saying why;
when your copy last checked in;
how many records your copy started in the last 90 days;
for each of the library’s own steps, how many records reached it in those 90 days.

Only counts are shared, and only for the library’s steps. Your library never sees your records, the values in them, your own steps, fields and automations, or who in your office did the work. For example, if your office works past the library’s “File it” step as described above, your library sees that 40 records started and none reached “File it”. It does not see what those records were about.

For libraries: publishing a process

If your account is a library, you publish a process from its Library panel: open the process’s diagram and choose Library from its ⋮ menu. Each publish stores a numbered revision of the whole process, with a short summary of what changed (What Changed), and you choose who may import it: Offline (nobody yet), Limited (a few named accounts) or Online (everyone who can see your library). Publish Revision asks you to confirm first, because every location that already has the process receives the new revision at its next daily update. A location imports a published revision, never your working copy, so you can keep editing without anything reaching a location before you are ready.

You can change who may import a process later without publishing again, with Save Who May Import It. This only decides who may import it from then on: a location that already has the process keeps receiving each new revision, even while the process is offline. The panel also holds the process’s Catalogue Keywords, which locations search by alongside its name and summary.

Two kinds of change cannot be published, because a location’s copy could not absorb them: changing a field’s type, and removing a field that one of your automations reads. Add a new field instead.

A publish is also refused while an automation setting, or the code of a JavaScript function the process runs, holds a password, key or token typed in as plain text, because the package would carry it to every location. Store it as a secret instead: refer to it in the setting, or read it in the function’s code as helpers.env.YOUR_VARIABLE_NAME. Each location fills in its own.

A revision that sends records somewhere new waits for a second person before any location receives it. “Somewhere new” means a web address, an email address or a text-message number that your last approved revision did not have, written into an automation, a JavaScript function, a field’s formula or a drop-down’s choices. It also covers an automation that takes its recipients, number or web address from a field: pointing it at a different field, or changing the formula of the field it reads, counts as somewhere new. For example, if you change a webhook to post to a different web address, the revision is stored but nobody can import it yet.

Another person who can publish to your library approves it in the process’s Library panel. Under Published Revisions, the waiting revision lists each new web address, email address or number it sends records to, with an Approve Revision button. The person who published the revision cannot approve it themselves, and the panel tells them so. Until it is approved, locations keep the last approved revision. A revision that only removes destinations, or goes back to ones already approved, needs no approval. Your first publish of a process counts as new for every destination it holds.

A location always imports your latest approved revision. Locations that already have the process receive each new revision automatically, as described in When the library updates a process. Earlier revisions stay stored for the locations that already follow them, but nobody can import one that you have replaced.

Every location that imports a process reports back to your library, as described in What your library sees. The reports are under Offices Using This Process in the process’s Library panel. So for each process you can tell which locations are on which revision, which are waiting on an update and why, and which have taken it off the library. Open a location’s row to see whether it still sends its records through each of your steps: a step no record reached in the last 90 days shows None. A location that stops checking in keeps its last report, with the date it last checked. Seeing these reports needs the right to edit the process.

To let locations fill in one setting of an automation with their own value, such as the wording of an email, switch on Offices may change this setting under that setting in the automation. The switch appears only in a library account, to people who can publish. Locations receive the change with your next revision.

A process you publish may only use AI Employee jobs that live in your own library. If you want to use a job from the ProcessPlan library, take your own copy of it into your library first: find the job in the Library Catalogue and choose Copy Into Your Library. The copy is yours from then on, and it starts offline until you publish it.

Publishing needs the Publish To Library permission, which ProcessPlan support switches on for a library account when the library is set up.