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Workflow Automation

Bahá'í Feast Announcement Workflow

The Bahá'í Feast Announcement workflow automates the full announcement cycle for each of the 19 Bahá'í months and all upcoming Holy Days and significant dates. It works for communities of any size — from a single gathering place to multiple areas each with their own coordinator — and handles community-wide occasions and per-area collection in the same workflow. Once configured and activated, it runs without any manual steps.

Community size and structure

The workflow adapts to how your community is organized:

  • Single gathering — configure one area with one coordinator, or mark each month community-wide so no collection is needed and the announcement goes out with a fixed location.
  • Multiple areas — each area has its own primary (and optional secondary) coordinator. Request, reminder, and escalation emails go to each area independently.
  • Mixed — some months or Holy Days can be community-wide while others are per-area. Riḍván Day 1 at the Bahá'í Center, Days 9 and 12 per-area — all handled in the same workflow.
Set community-wide months and Holy Day overrides as early as you can: before the month begins for a Feast, and more than 30 days ahead for a Holy Day. That is when the workflow decides which coordinators to ask. Changes made later still update the announcement, but coordinators may already have been asked for their details.

Seeing how your workflow works

On the workflow page, click the diagram button next to Edit to open a full-screen map of your workflow. It starts with the big picture — Prepare, Gather, Follow up, and Announce — and you can click into any phase to see its steps and who each one emails. Click a step to see the details: timing, recipients, your areas and their contacts, and the dates for the upcoming cycle. Each step has an edit link that takes you straight to the matching setting.

How the cycle works

Each Bahá'í month is one cycle. The workflow announces the upcoming feast during the current month — so while the community is in the month of Núr, the workflow is collecting information and sending announcements for the feast of Raḥmat.

The engine computes all trigger dates automatically based on the Bahá'í calendar and your timing settings. A typical cycle looks like this:

  • Day 7 of the current month — information request emails sent to each area coordinator (and, for a community-wide Feast, a preview to the LSA)
  • Day 9 — reminder sent to coordinators who have not yet responded
  • Day 11 — admin escalation if any areas are still missing
  • 7 days before the Feast — community announcement sent to the distribution list
  • 3 days before the Feast — community reminder sent
The request, reminder, and escalation days follow your timing settings. The defaults above reflect a 2-day reminder window and a 2-day escalation window. The announcement and reminder always go out 7 and 3 days before the Feast.

Area coordinators

Each area has a primary contact and optionally a secondary. When the workflow fires, each coordinator receives a personalized email with a secure link to submit their area's hosting details — date, time, host name, location, and notes. No login is required; the link is unique to each coordinator and expires automatically.

If a coordinator does not respond before the reminder date, they receive an automatic follow-up, and the secondary contact (if set) receives their first request. If there is still no response, the admin receives an escalation alert with a link to enter the information manually. Coordinators can still submit after the escalation.

Volunteer host integration

If a community member has signed up as a volunteer host for a given area and feast month, the workflow detects this automatically. Instead of sending an information request to the area coordinator, it uses the volunteer's details directly and notifies the coordinator that a volunteer has been confirmed. No action is needed from the coordinator.

The admin status report will show a Volunteer hosts section listing any areas filled by volunteers, along with the host name, date, and a confirmation that the coordinator was notified.

Admin status emails

The admin receives three routine digest emails per cycle, plus a delay notice if any area is still missing when the announcement is due:

  • Status report — sent when coordinator request emails go out, listing all areas, contacts, any volunteer-filled areas, and the upcoming schedule
  • Heads up — sent just before reminder emails fire, showing which areas have responded and which are still pending
  • Reminders sent — sent after reminder emails go out, confirming which areas were reminded and when escalation will occur
  • Delay notice — sent only if the announcement must be postponed because one or more areas are still missing, listing those areas and the new send date

Manual override

At any point during a cycle, the admin can enter hosting information manually for any area from the run detail page. Click the pencil icon on an area's step to open the override form. You can also use it to correct details an area has already submitted; the coordinator is notified of the change.

Scheduling mode

When a new cycle starts with limited time before the feast, the engine automatically adjusts the schedule:

  • Normal — full timing as configured
  • Compressed — shortened windows when 4–9 days remain before the feast
  • Tight — initial request only, no reminder, escalation the next day, when fewer than 4 days remain

When information is missing

If any area has not submitted its details by the announcement date, the workflow delays rather than sending an incomplete announcement:

  • The announcement is pushed back by 2 days
  • The admin receives a delay notice listing the missing areas and the new send date
  • Each missing coordinator receives an urgent request with the deadline

This delay happens once per cycle. On the new date the announcement goes out with whatever has been collected — areas that never responded are simply omitted from the email. A single unresponsive coordinator never blocks the announcement indefinitely.

If no area has submitted anything and no community-wide gathering is scheduled for the cycle, the announcement is not sent at all. An empty announcement is never mailed to your community. The workflow re-checks daily, so it will go out as soon as any area submits or you enter details manually. If the cycle ends with nothing collected, the run is marked cancelled with a note explaining why.

The community reminder always goes out at least 2 days after the announcement actually sent — so if the announcement was delayed, the reminder shifts with it rather than arriving on its heels.

Where announcements appear

Community announcements and reminders are sent through GroupPost, so they appear in your GroupPost message list alongside messages sent by people, with the same delivery and open statistics. Your dashboard activity also shows each send — for example, "Workflow sent the Feast announcement to 670 recipients" — and clicking it opens that message's summary.

Holy Days and significant dates

In addition to the 19 Bahá'í months, the workflow automatically creates a run for each upcoming Bahá'í Holy Day and significant date within a 30-day window. This includes the 9 Holy Days (on which work is suspended) as well as the Day of the Covenant and the Ascension of 'Abdu'l-Bahá.

By default, each Holy Day is handled per-area — the same pipeline as the Nineteen Day Feast. Each area coordinator is asked to submit gathering details, and the community announcement is sent 7 days before the occasion with a reminder 3 days before. The admin receives a one-time notice when a new Holy Day run is created, explaining this default and how to change it.

The email content is occasion-aware. Celebrations, Commemorations, and Observances each use appropriate wording — no Feast language appears in Holy Day emails.

Holy Day runs use a backward-planned schedule: coordinator requests (and the LSA preview, for community-wide occasions) go out 13 days before the occasion, escalation at day −9, announcement at day −7, and reminder at day −3. Even in the worst-case delay scenario, the announcement always reaches the community at least 2 days before the occasion.

Holy Day overrides

If your community observes a particular Holy Day differently from the per-area default, you can configure an override from the workflow's edit page under Holy Day Overrides. Three modes are available for each upcoming occasion:

  • Per-area (default) — each area is asked for its own gathering details, same as the Feast pipeline
  • Community-wide — all areas gather at one location; provide the location name, address, time, and optional notes. Coordinator requests are sent only to areas set to keep collecting their own details, and the LSA receives a preview of the announcement.
  • Skip — no emails are sent for this occasion and the run is immediately marked complete

Overrides apply to the specific occurrence being configured. Each year's occasions can be set independently as they approach.

Community-wide Feasts

If a community-wide feast is scheduled for a Feast cycle, collect steps are skipped for every area that follows the community-wide schedule, and the announcement uses the community feast details. Community-wide Feast months are configured from the Community-Wide Feasts section of the workflow edit page.

An area can be set to keep collecting its own details even in community-wide months — for example, an outlying area that holds its own gathering. That area is still asked for its details, and they appear in the announcement alongside the community-wide gathering. Admin escalation is skipped unless at least one such area is still collecting.

Changes to a community-wide Feast's location, time, or notes are reflected in the announcement even after the month has begun.

LSA review

Before a community-wide Feast or Holy Day announcement goes out, the workflow can send the Local Spiritual Assembly a preview so they can catch anything that needs correcting. Add the LSA's email under Community settings on the workflow edit page (or in the admin step of guided setup).

  • When — on the same day coordinator requests would go out: day 7 of the month for a Feast, 13 days before a Holy Day
  • What — the exact announcement the community will receive, with a note asking the LSA to contact the workflow admin if anything looks wrong
  • Only for community-wide occasions — for per-area Feasts and Holy Days, nothing is sent to the LSA
One LSA address is supported. Use the Assembly's shared or forwarding address so every member receives a copy. To stop sending previews, clear the LSA email.
Last updated: September 23, 2026