Workflow automation
The steps that should happen on their own
Every business has jobs that exist only because two systems do not talk to each other, or because someone has to remember to chase. Those are the ones worth automating first.
The path a job takes
- Digital form
- Power Automate
- SharePoint
- Email notification
The problem
Manual steps are invisible until you add them up
Individually none of these take long. Together they are often most of someone's week.
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Approvals that live in email
A request goes out, then sits. Nobody can say whether it was seen, who has it now, or what was decided last time something similar came up.
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Re-keying between systems
Information is entered in one place, then typed again into another because there is no connection between the two.
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Filing by hand
Finished documents get saved manually, which means naming conventions drift and things end up in the wrong folder — or somebody's downloads.
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Chasing as a job description
Someone spends part of every day checking whether a stage has been completed and reminding people that it has not.
What Forge provides
Automation that fits the process you already have
The first job is deciding what should be automated and what should not. Automating a broken process only makes it break faster, so the process gets mapped first and simplified where it obviously needs it. What is left is built with the most direct tool available — often something already included in a Microsoft 365 subscription.
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Trigger
Something happens
A form is submitted, a job is marked complete, or a date is reached.
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Rules
The system decides
Conditions you set determine who it goes to and what happens next.
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Action
The work is done
A document is produced, a record updated, an approval requested.
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Record
It is filed and flagged
Stored where it belongs, numbered consistently, and the right people told.
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Digital forms and approvals
Paper forms and email chains replaced with structured digital forms and sign-offs, routed to the right people and recorded automatically.
- Structured, validated data instead of free text
- Requests routed on rules you set
- A clear record of every decision
- Built with Microsoft Power Apps and Power Automate where they fit
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Documents and filing
Documents generated from captured data and filed where they belong, without anyone choosing a folder or inventing a filename.
- PDFs built to consistent, branded templates
- Automatic filing into Microsoft SharePoint
- Consistent reference numbering
- Images resized and processed on upload
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Notifications and reliability
Automation is only useful if you can trust it, which means knowing when something has not worked.
- Email notifications at the stages that matter
- Retries when a step fails first time
- Failure alerts, so problems surface rather than going unnoticed
In practice
Automation inside a working system
In the portals Forge built for GB Solutions UK, the automation is not a separate product bolted on — it is part of how the applications work. Client and site details are selected from shared records rather than re-typed, finished documents are generated as branded PDFs and filed into SharePoint automatically, photographs uploaded from a phone are processed on arrival, and email notifications with retries and failure alerts sit behind it all.
Related services
Next step
Which job would you stop doing by hand?
Describe the step that keeps coming back. A free consultation will tell you whether it is worth automating, and what it would take.