Automations Overview

Available with purchase of Expertise Engine Premium

Overview

Automations is the new centralized location for Kantata OX integrations, automations, and more. The powerful features and capabilities within Automations allow you to connect Kantata OX to the tools and systems you already use, automate best practices, simplify workflows, and maximize productivity.

Automations includes the following capabilities and benefits:

Integrate
- Connect your other project management and finance tools and systems to Kantata OX to automate data flows and ensure data integrity
Automate
- Leverage prebuilt workflows to automate manual and tedious tasks
- Build custom workflows with AI-assistance to codify your organization’s processes and best practices
Monitor
- Track integration activity and progress in real-time
- Identify and troubleshoot issues

How to Access Automations

The Automations platform is available with purchase of Expertise Engine Premium.

Once activated for your account, you must be in a custom Access Group with the proper permissions in the Automations Access Group set checked. Account Administrators do not have access to Automations by default and must be added to a custom Access Group.

Once you have Access Group permissions, an Automations link appears in the left navigation.

Integrations and Connections

The Integrations and Connections tabs display all the integrations that have been made available for your account. You set up connections to external systems in the Connections tab, then configure integration options via the Configure button in the Integrations tab.

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Click the Configure button for an integration to open the integration’s Scenarios page. On the Scenarios page, you can manage an integration’s scenarios and access Application Configuration options (i.e. mapping tables).

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A scenario executes a logic-based series of actions to complete a desired behavior for an integration. Scenarios are prebuilt and the actions within a scenario cannot be modified or reordered.

Select the Application Configuration button to open a modal where you can configure integration options and mapping tables. The options in this modal differ for each integration.

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Mapping tables allow you to match or pair different points of data between Kantata and an external system for data syncing purposes. For example, you can configure a Kantata expense category to sync to a corresponding NetSuite expense category.

How to Set Up an Integration

The general process for setting up an integration is as follows:

Set up a connection in the Connections tab.

Note: The exact process differs for each integration. Some integrations are authenticated through the browser, while others require you to enter access tokens or other data acquired from the external system.

In the Integrations tab, select the Configure button for the integration.
On the Configuration page, select the Edit button for each scenario you plan to activate and configure its options.
On the Configuration page, select the Application Configuration button to open a modal where you can configure integration options and set up the mapping tables.
Activate scenarios in the Scenarios page.

You can then monitor activity and troubleshoot errors in the Activity tab.

Workflows

Workflows are a logic-based series of actions designed to automatically perform a designed behavior in a specific order. Workflows help you enforce business rules and requirements, automate best practices, ensure data integrity, and save time.

Standard Workflows

Standard workflows are prebuilt workflows that have simple configuration options and can be set up quickly. The standard workflows help you save time, automate best practices, and ensure data integrity.

To access standard workflows, hover over Automations in the left navigation, then select Workflows. Select the Standard subtab.

From this page, you can activate or deactivate standard workflows, configure their options, and manually run them (via the Sync button).

The Automations platform comes with the following prebuilt standard workflows.

Name	Description
Project Plan Updater / Shift Project Plan	When project dates shift, other data such as allocations and task start dates also need to be shifted. Keeping this data in sync manually can be tedious and prone to error. This workflow can also cascade date shifts to tasks, eliminating the need for manual updates and helping you ensure data integrity.
Task Plan Updater	When task dates shift, scheduled hours also need to be shifted. Keeping this data in sync manually can be tedious and prone to error. This workflow eliminates the need for manual updates and helping you ensure data integrity.
Onboarding/Offboarding Workweek Management	Workweek information affects utilization reports in dynamic Insights, classic Insights, and Analytics. When users are added or deactivated, it’s essential that their workweeks in Kantata accurately reflect their hire or end date. This workflow removes a user’s workweeks before their start date and after their end date, ensuring the accuracy of data in utilization reports.
Remove Future Scheduled Hours	Scheduled hours are the number of hours a resource is scheduled to spend on a task within a project. When tasks are completed ahead of time, the remaining scheduled hours must be removed for accurate resource availability information and to avoid impacting reports. This workflow deletes all future scheduled hours for a task after the task is marked as completed. This workflow can be configured to consider “future” as after the day the task is marked as completed, after the task’s due date, or after a date entered in a specified task custom field.
Timesheet Submission Reminder Timesheet Approval Reminder	Ensuring that timesheets are compliant and moving through approvals in a timely manner is critical for billing, revenue recognition, reporting, and more. These workflows send notifications to users with unsubmitted timesheets or to time approvers who need to approve timesheets. These workflows can run on a specified frequency or after a specified number of days have passed since a timesheet was created or submitted.
Invite Users to New Project (Static) Invite Users to New Project (Dynamic)	Your organization may invite certain people or groups to every new project. However, this can be a tedious and easily forgotten task. These workflows invite users to new projects, eliminating the need to manually invite users to each new project. The invited users can be a static set of users or a dynamically selected set of users based on project and user data.

Workflow Studio (Custom Workflows)

Custom workflows are workflows created specifically for your organization and can be configured to do anything in Kantata. You can build your own custom workflows or our Professional Services team can build them for you.

To access custom workflows, hover over Automations in the left navigation, then select Workflows. Select the Studio subtab.

From this page, you can activate or deactivate custom workflows; edit their names, descriptions, or info URLs; manually run workflows; or delete workflows.

When creating a custom workflow, you have the flexibility to build it manually using the visual builder or build it with AI through conversation. Select the Workflow AI icon in the upper-right to open the agent chat.

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To get started with services-built custom workflows, please reach out to Professional Services.

Using Custom Agents in Workflows

You can leverage custom agents from within a custom workflow. This reduces the complexity of workflows and allows you to take advantage of the task-focused custom agents your organization has already created.

For example, you could set up a custom workflow that checks for new project members every week and triggers a “Project Onboarding Assistant” custom agent that welcomes new members with personalized onboarding action plans.

To trigger a custom agent within a custom workflow:

Go to Settings > Agent Studio, select a custom agent, and note the following information:
- The agent ID
- Required fields—Expand the Input Schema section, then expand the required section in the JSON code. Note the fields within the required section.
In the workflow editor, add a node and select the Execute Custom Agent action.
Enter the agent ID in the id field.
Enter a prompt.
Select + Additional Field > Input. In the input field, add the required fields that were listed in the agent's input schema—in JSON format—and add values for the fields.

Running Workflows via the Expertise Agent

Run powerful workflows through conversation with the Expertise Agent. The prebuilt standard workflows are triggered by certain actions, such as projects being updated or tasks being completed. However, you may want to run these workflows on a one-off basis or allow users who do not have access to the Automations platform to run them. When the Expertise Agent identifies that a user’s question or request matches an existing workflow within the Automations platform, the Agent will leverage the workflow as a tool to fulfill the request.

The following standard workflows can be run via the Expertise Agent:

Shift Project Plan—Updates the project start date, task start dates, allocations, and scheduled hours by a specified number of days. You must be a Project Administrator in a project to run this workflow. Suggested prompt: Shift this project plan by 10 days.

To run a workflow from the Expertise Agent:

Type / into the Expertise Agent.
Select the /workflows command.
Select a specific workflow.
The Expertise Agent may ask you for certain information before running the workflow, such as a specific project to run the workflow for.

Activity Tab

The Activity tab displays all the integration and workflow activity of the Automations platform. This tab lets you drill into Automations activity and helps you identify and troubleshoot issues.

The Events subtab displays all of the executed steps of workflows, which make up scenarios and workflows.

In the Events subtab, you can:

Filter executions by status
Search for executions by scenario or workflow name
Expand executions to see their individual nodes
Open the side panel for an execution’s node to see its details

In the node side panel, you can:

Select the Previous node (“ ”) and Next node (“ ”) icons to navigate node by node
Select the Re-run (“ ”) icon to re-run the execution

How to Troubleshoot Errors

To find information for an error:

Expand the execution
Locate the node with an Error status
Select the Side Panel (“ ”) icon for that node
In the Details section of the node side panel, locate the Response message
The Variables section provides a snapshot of the data used for that execution