Workflows

Some projects follow a predictable path. A legal case moves from intake to discovery to resolution. A nonprofit processes applications through review, approval, and onboarding. An invoice goes from draft to sent to paid. CaseMgr’s workflow engine lets you model these progressions directly, so your cases move forward with structure and clarity.

Stages: The Phases of Your Work

Workflows in CaseMgr are built around stages — the major phases a case moves through. Think of stages as chapters in the life of a project. A client onboarding workflow might have stages like Initial Contact, Document Collection, Review, and Active.

Each stage contains the tasks, milestones, and conditions relevant to that phase. When a stage is active, you see exactly what needs to happen before moving on. When it’s complete, the next stage activates automatically or waits for your signal.

Tasks and Milestones

Within each stage, tasks represent the actual work — the things someone needs to do. Tasks can be assigned, tracked, and completed. They support the full lifecycle: available, active, completed, or skipped.

Milestones mark significant achievements within a stage. Unlike tasks, milestones aren’t about doing work — they’re about recognizing that a condition has been met. “All documents received” or “Client approved proposal” are milestones. They give you clear checkpoints as a case progresses.

Gates and Triggers

The real power of CaseMgr workflows comes from sentries — think of them as gates that control when things happen. A sentry watches for specific conditions and triggers the next step when those conditions are met.

For example, a sentry might say: “When the Document Review task is completed AND the Compliance Check milestone is reached, activate the Approval stage.” This means you define the rules once, and the workflow enforces them every time. No more forgetting steps or moving forward prematurely.

Event listeners extend this further by responding to things that happen outside the normal task flow — a timer expiring, an external system sending a notification, or a user-triggered event.

Workflow Templates

You don’t have to build workflows from scratch for every case. CaseMgr supports case plan models — reusable workflow templates that define the stages, tasks, milestones, and sentries for a common process. Create a template once, then apply it to new cases as needed.

This is especially valuable for repeatable processes:

• Legal practices — standard templates for case types like personal injury, contract disputes, or immigration applications
• Nonprofit organizations — intake and grant management workflows with consistent review stages
• Freelancers and agencies — project delivery pipelines from proposal through final delivery and invoicing
• Invoice generation — automated progression from time tracking through PDF creation and payment tracking

Automatic Lifecycle Management

Once a workflow is in place, CaseMgr manages the lifecycle for you. Stages activate and complete based on the rules you’ve defined. Tasks become available when their prerequisites are met. Milestones are reached when conditions align. The system tracks the state of everything so you can focus on the actual work rather than managing the process around it.

You always retain full control — you can manually advance stages, skip tasks, or override sentry conditions when real-world situations don’t fit the template perfectly. The workflow serves you, not the other way around.

Built on a Real Standard

CaseMgr’s workflow engine is built on CMMN (Case Management Model and Notation), an industry standard designed specifically for case-based work. This isn’t a proprietary workflow builder — it’s a proven approach used in enterprise systems, adapted to be accessible for individuals and small teams.