Guide · Design
How to create a process in Ovenbird
From a description, your notes or an old document to a published process your team can follow, learn and correct. Eight steps; most teams finish the first one in a session.
- Start from what you have
Four ways in. Describe the process in a sentence. Paste your notes, a chat thread or an old checklist. Improve an existing document: Ovenbird loads it and asks about the gaps. Or build it visually on an empty board with one Start stage.
- Answer the interview
Ovenbird asks one to three questions at a time, with options that match how your team already names things. It never invents an owner, a tool, a channel or a deadline: anything undecided is listed as an open question. The draft updates after every answer.
- Shape the stages
A good process has three to eight stages. Each one gets an owner, two to six steps written as instructions, an observable done when, and its exceptions ("If the customer is on a legacy plan: …"). You keep your own wording.
- Arrange the board
The same process as cards in columns. Drag steps from the palette (Jira, GitHub, Slack, email, Freshdesk, Confluence, calendar, QA, release, manual) or your team's own steps; add approvals, waits and decisions with yes/no branches; set time limits. The board and the draft stay in sync.
- Fix what the quality check flags
Errors block publishing: a stage with no owner or no done-when, fewer than two stages, a vague "when it applies". Warnings and tips catch the rest: no process owner, more than eight stages, an exception with no outcome, vague words like "asap" or "as needed", overlap with a process you already have.
- Try it on a sample case
Paste a real situation. Ovenbird answers with only this draft as the process: the next step it would give, or the questions it would ask first. If the answer is wrong, the document is wrong; fix it before anyone follows it.
- Simulate the bottleneck
Give it your numbers: items per day, people per stage, hours per item, rework rate. Watch the queue form in front of the slow stage before it happens for real, change one assumption in the what-if, and compare lead times side by side. Approvals with no time limit and one senior person holding most steps are flagged automatically.
- Publish, train, keep it true
Publish to Confluence (a page in the space you choose) or as a document file; the process is registered and routing starts. From the same document: a course with scenarios and refreshers for the team, and the loop that turns every correction people make into a proposed edit to the page, versioned.
What you end up with
- A document in a fixed shape: purpose, when it applies, starts when, owner, numbered stages each with owner, steps, done-when and exceptions, out of scope.
- A graph Ovenbird uses to give the next step for any item that matches the process, with the paragraph quoted.
- A course built from the document, with mastery per stage and refreshers at 2, 7, 30 and 90 days.
- A simulation you can rerun whenever the numbers change.
- A change feed: every version, what changed, and who was trained on which one.
Questions
How long does it take?
A first version of a five-stage process usually takes one interview session. Most of the time goes into deciding owners and done-when criteria your team never wrote down.
Can I start from the document we already have?
Yes. Choose Improve, paste the link, and Ovenbird fills the draft from it and asks only about what is missing or vague.
Does the process have to involve tickets?
No. A process can be a shift handover, a purchase approval, a guest complaint or a new-hire week. Items can be a ticket, an issue, a record in your CRM or a situation you describe.
Where does the published process live?
In your Confluence space or as a file you keep; Ovenbird reads it live from there and shows which version each answer followed. It never edits a page silently: changes are proposed for a person to apply.
What is process guidance · Processes by industry and type · Integrations