# Introducing Keen Workflows: Automate Your Partnership Busywork Source: https://keenpartner.com/blog/building-workflows-on-keen Published: 2026-06-05 Category: Keen Keen Workflows put your partnership follow-ups on autopilot. Pick a trigger, chain the actions, and let Keen run it reliably, every time, whether you build it in the visual builder or with Keen AI. Partnership work is full of small, repetitive follow-ups. A partner sends a new lead, so someone has to create a deal in the CRM. A lead moves to Won, so someone has to update a record, ping a channel in Slack, and make sure the reward fires. None of it is hard, but it adds up, and the moment a step gets forgotten, the partnership looks sloppy to the people you most want to impress. That's exactly what [Keen Workflows](/features/workflows) are built to fix. A workflow is an event-driven automation: it watches for something to happen, like a new lead, a deal moving forward, or a status change, and then runs the follow-up for you, the same way, every time. You set up the steps once and Keen keeps your team, your partners, and your CRM in sync automatically, so nothing slips through the cracks. The idea is simple: pick a trigger, chain the actions you want, and let Keen run it reliably. And you don't have to be technical to set one up. Keen gives you two ways to build a workflow on top of the same reliable engine, a full visual builder for hands-on control and Keen AI for when you'd rather just describe what you want, so anyone on your team can put their partnership busywork on autopilot. ## What a Workflow Actually Is Every workflow has the same simple shape: a **trigger** that starts it, followed by one or more **actions** that run in response. The trigger is the event you want to react to. In Keen, triggers come in a few flavors: - **Keen lead events.** Fire when a new lead is created, when a lead is updated, or when a lead's status changes. You can scope these to the specific channels you care about. - **CRM events.** React to deal activity in HubSpot and Pipedrive, like a new deal, an updated deal, a stage move, or a deal that matches a filter you define. - **Developer webhooks.** Let any external system kick off a workflow by calling a webhook trigger with its own payload. The actions are what happens next. You can chain as many as you need: - **Keen actions.** Create a lead, update a lead, or change a lead's status. - **CRM sync.** Create or update contacts, deals, and companies in HubSpot and Pipedrive. - **Messaging.** Post to Slack, or call any custom webhook with your own URL, method, headers, and body. - **Flow control.** Filter so the workflow only continues when conditions pass, or branch to route work down different paths. A useful detail: each step can reuse details from the steps before it, like a lead's name or email. So a "New lead" trigger can feed the lead's contact info straight into a "Create deal" action without any copying and pasting. ## Option 1: Build It Visually If you like seeing the whole picture and tweaking each piece, the visual builder is for you. You start by choosing a trigger, then add the steps you want one after another. Each step shows up as a card, connected top to bottom, so the flow reads exactly like the sequence of events it represents. Click any step to configure it with simple, guided options, no code or expression syntax required. A typical build looks like this: 1. Add a trigger, for example **New lead** on your "Leads from Acme Inc." channel. 2. Add a **Create deal** action and map the lead's fields into your CRM. 3. Add a **Send Slack message** action so your team knows a partner lead just came in. 4. Add a **filter** if you only want the workflow to continue for certain leads, or a **branch** if different leads should take different paths. As you go, Keen checks your work. If a step is missing a required field or references something that isn't available yet, it tells you before you save, so what you build actually runs. When you're happy with it, turn it on and it starts firing on the next matching event. The visual builder is the right choice when you want precise control, when the logic has branches and conditions, or when you simply enjoy assembling things yourself. ## Option 2: Let Keen AI Set It Up Not sure where to start, or just want it done quickly? Describe what you want and let [Keen AI](/features/keen-ai) build it. Instead of dragging cards around, you have a short conversation. Keen AI asks a few plain-language questions and suggests answers you can pick from, so you're never staring at a blank canvas. It might ask what should start the workflow, which channel it should watch, and what action to run when a lead is marked Won, each time offering a handful of options to choose from. From those answers, Keen AI assembles the whole workflow for you, trigger and actions wired together, ready to run. There's no setup screen to learn and no jargon to decode. You describe the outcome you want, and it handles the assembly. Because Keen AI builds on the same engine as the visual builder, the result isn't a black box. The workflow it produces is a normal Keen workflow: you can open it in the visual builder afterward, see every step, and adjust anything you like. ## Same Engine, Same Result This is the key idea: the visual builder and Keen AI are two front doors to one reliable system. They produce identical workflows, run on the same triggers and actions, and are validated the same way. That means you don't have to commit to one approach. A common pattern is to let Keen AI draft a workflow from a quick conversation, then open it in the visual builder to fine-tune a filter or add an extra step. Beginners can lean on Keen AI to get started, power users can build by hand, and everyone ends up with automations that just work. ## Where to Start If you're new to workflows, the easiest first win is to automate something you already do by hand after every partner lead. Think about the manual step that always follows an event, like creating a CRM deal when a lead comes in, or notifying your team when a deal is won. - If you'd rather describe it, open Keen AI and tell it what should happen. - If you'd rather build it, open the workflow builder, pick your trigger, and add the steps. Either way, you set it up once and Keen takes care of the rest, so your partnerships run smoothly without anyone having to remember the busywork.