Articles on: Printing: start, queue & track

How a workflow works: stages, tasks, conditions and checks

Workflows in SimplyPrint lets you describe the route work takes after it prints, as stages and tasks. This guide covers the parts a workflow is made of and how each one behaves, so you can read any workflow and know what it will do before you publish it.

Not live for everyone yet. Workflows is rolling out to a closed pilot first, so some accounts won't see it yet. Once it opens up, it is part of the Print Farm, School and Enterprise plans.

This article is part of the Workflows guide. When you're ready to make one, see building, editing and publishing a workflow.

Workflows, revisions and runs
What a workflow can follow
Stages
What moves work into a stage
Checks on a stage
Tasks
Tasks that appear only when needed
Per-piece and per-plate tasks
What a stage does on entry

Workflows, revisions and runs

A workflow is the route work takes, written once. When you publish it, SimplyPrint saves a numbered revision, such as Revision 3. Each time something starts following the workflow, a run starts for it from the newest published revision.

A run never changes underneath the people working on it. If you publish Revision 4 while ten runs are on Revision 3, those ten finish on Revision 3. Only new runs use Revision 4.

What a workflow can follow

When you create a workflow you say what it applies to. One workflow can cover several kinds of work:

In the panel	What it is
Print jobs	A print on a printer
Files	A file in your library
Projects, Project items, Project prints added to the queue	Work from Projects
Orders, Order lines	A Shop order, or one line on it
Production work	A Shop item being made (the board calls these Item)
Output lots	A plate of finished pieces

The ready-made workflows each cover one of these. Basic post-processing and School pickup follow print jobs, Item finishing follows Shop items, and Order pipeline and Packing & shipping follow Shop orders.

Stages

A stage is somewhere work sits: Queued, Printing, Post-processing, Ready to pack. Stages run top to bottom in the order you list them.

Each stage can have a role, such as Printing, Post-processing, Quality check, Ready to pack, Packed or Shipped. The role is what the board groups by, so a stage you call "Bench" and another workflow's "Finishing" both show in the Post-processing column. A stage with no role shows under Other.

A stage marked Reaching this finishes the job ends the run. That is not always the last stage: a route that can end two ways, such as collected or scrapped, marks both.

A workflow needs at least one finishing stage. Without one, its runs would stay open forever, so publishing refuses it.

What moves work into a stage

By default a person moves work on, with Move to (stage) on the run. A stage can also be entered automatically:

When the print starts
When the print finishes
When the bed is cleared

A stage can also move on by itself as soon as the next stage's checks pass. The ready-made Item finishing and Packing & shipping workflows work this way (the editor keeps this when you edit, but can't switch it on): an item moves into finishing when its first piece is counted, and on when every piece and step is done.

See: Workflows in the Shop: order and item workflows, accepted pieces and moving on by itself

Checks on a stage

Checks say what must be true before work may enter or leave a stage. When a check fails, the run says why instead of moving, for example "Not every item has been accepted yet." The checks are:

Required tasks done. Work can't leave the stage until its required tasks are done, skipped or waived.
Everything underneath is finished. An order waits until every item's own workflow has finished.
Every piece accepted. An order or item waits until every piece it needs has been printed and accepted. With "at least one", it waits only for the first piece.
Every piece put away. Work waits until each piece is in a tray or on a shelf. In the editor this is Every piece must be in a tray or on a shelf first.
Confirm first. Entering the stage asks a person to confirm, such as "Release this order to the print queue?"

The order workflows use two checks together on Ready to pack: every item's workflow finished, and every piece accepted. Both matter: an item with no workflow of its own has nothing to finish, so only the piece count can hold the order back for it.

Tasks

A task is something a person does at a stage. Each task can be:

Required or optional. A required task holds the stage until it is done. Skipping a required task is called waiving it, and the run records that something required did not happen.
Timed, with an estimate in minutes. The board adds these up per column as "~N min of work".
Asking for a note before it can be ticked off.
Limited to a user group, so only members of that group can tick it, undo it or skip it. People who manage workflows always can.
Linked to guidance from the task library: instructions, a video, a reference link or an Academy course.

See: Workflow permissions, group-only steps and the activity history

Tasks that appear only when needed

A task can carry a condition, so it is only added when the print needs it. The conditions SimplyPrint can check are:

The plate used supports
Estimated print time is longer or shorter than a number of minutes
The material, when every filament on the plate is that material
What the buyer chose, for Shop extra work added by a rule

When the condition is true, the task is added and Why? says "Added because the print needs it." When it is false, the task isn't added.

When SimplyPrint can't tell, the task is still shown, marked Might not be needed, and Why? gives the reason, such as "Kept because nothing has been sliced for it yet." or "Kept because a G-code file does not say whether it uses supports." A task is never silently dropped because a fact was missing.

Per-piece and per-plate tasks

A task marked Do this for every piece is counted instead of ticked once: three pieces means three checks, and a reprinted piece reopens it. The run shows progress such as "2 of 3 pieces".

A stage can also be set to Do these steps for each plate as it comes off, not once for the whole item. Each plate then gets its own copy of the steps, so you can sand plate 1 while plate 3 is still printing.

What a stage does on entry

Some stages do something outside the workflow when they are entered. In the ready-made workflows:

Order pipeline's Queued stage adds the order to the print queue.
School pickup's Ready for collection stage emails whoever asked for the print.

The editor shows these as a count of automatic actions on the stage. A stage's name never does anything by itself: renaming Queued doesn't stop it releasing, and a stage you call "Queued" in your own workflow releases nothing.

Moving into a stage like this asks first: "This stage does something outside the workflow when it is entered." If an action fails, such as an email that couldn't be sent, the run says so at the top instead of looking as if nothing happened.

Workflows

Working with runs

Shop, Projects and the print queue

Updated on: 06/11/2026

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