General best practices

These apply across all workflow templates. Each template's own article covers its specifics. This section collects the patterns worth getting right regardless of which template you use.

Make sure the triggering alert is applied and configured correctly

Some workflows are started by an alert. If the alert that triggers a template isn't applied to a shipment, the workflow never runs on it and there's no error to tell you so. Before turning a workflow on:

Confirm the right alert is applied to the shipments you want covered. Each template's Preconditions section names the alert it depends on.
Check the alert's phase. Several templates only act on events in a specific phase of the shipment. For example, an alert that needs to fire at the destination or in transit. An alert applied but configured for the wrong phase will silently fail to trigger the workflow.
Watch for alert-specific requirements. Some are easy to miss. For example, Route Deviation Monitoring only works with a Route Deviation alert built from Tive Suggested Routes, not one created from "Extract Routes from Shipments."

Decide where notifications should come from

Several templates send their own emails when they act. If the underlying alert is also configured to notify the same people, they'll receive two emails for one event, one from the alert, one from the workflow.

Decide which source should notify, and configure accordingly:

To be notified through the workflow, add recipients on the workflow and remove them from the alert.

The goal is one notification per event, from the source you intend.

Set up your safe zones before turning a workflow on

A safe zone isn’t a special kind of location. It’s how the workflow treats the locations you point it to. When you configure a template, you choose which of your saved locations should count as safe zones, meaning events there are treated as expected and are suppressed. By default, templates count locations of certain types, such as Warehouses and Distribution Centers, as safe zones. The default only works if you actually have locations saved with those types. If your account has none, the safe-zone set is empty. The template treats every qualifying event as happening outside a safe zone and acts on all of them.

Before turning on a template that uses safe zones, make sure the locations you consider safe are actually configured as safe zones so the workflow has something to match against. For step-by-step instructions on creating and editing locations, see Configuring locations here.

Account for battery on templates that increase reporting frequency

Templates that raise tracking frequency (5-minute intervals, GPS on) use more tracker battery. They're designed to do this only when something happens and revert after a set period so the battery cost is concentrated in the moments that matter.

Two things to get right:

Keep your baseline tracker settings at normal reporting frequency. The workflow's value is the jump from normal to frequent reporting when a risk event fires. If your trackers already run at high frequency by default, there's nothing to escalate to.
On long lanes, check that battery will last to the end. These workflows include a safeguard: they won't raise frequency if the battery is too low to sustain it. That protects the device, but it also means that late in a long journey, when the tracker has been running for days, the workflow may not escalate exactly when a last-mile risk event fires. If your lanes run long, start with a fully charged tracker and conservative baseline settings so headroom is still there at the end.

Don't run templates that overlap together

Some templates respond to similar situations in different ways. Running them together can mean a single event triggers both, double-notifying your team and competing to change the same tracker settings.

Risk Event Monitoring and Likely Theft Escalation. Both react to light outside safe zones. Pick the one that matches how you want to respond rather than running both: Risk Event for a broad single-signal reaction, Likely Theft for a stricter two-signal escalation.

Complete Shipment on Unloading vs. Intelligent Shipment Completion. Both close shipments automatically — turn on one, not both, or they'll compete to complete the same shipment. The choice comes down to whether you define destinations:

You know the final destination when creating shipments → use Complete Shipment on Unloading. It relies on the destination geofence you've set.
You don't define a destination up front (for example, shipments created via Automatic Shipments) → use Intelligent Shipment Completion instead. Enable it in the Automatic Shipments configuration panel — it works out the destination itself from idle behavior, location context, and light signals.

Start narrow, then widen

A workflow applies to all your shipments by default. (When Shipment Targeting is available: Use targeting to apply a new workflow to a small set of shipments — one lane or origin — first, confirm it behaves the way you expect by checking shipment Comments, then widen its scope.) Until then, be deliberate: turning a workflow on affects every eligible shipment immediately, so review its behavior on early shipments via their Comments before treating it as fully trusted.