Blueprints
A blueprint is a reusable design of a process your company repeats — onboarding a new employee, approving a vendor, reviewing a document. You draw the steps once on a visual canvas, publish it, and from then on you start the whole process with a single click.
Every time you start a blueprint, Arketic creates the tasks, assigns them to the right people, waits for each one to be completed, and then moves on to the next step by itself. Nobody has to remember what comes next.
What problem blueprints solve
Many processes repeat the same steps in the same order every time:
- Employee onboarding — IT setup → HR forms → manager introduction → training
- Vendor approval — request → finance review → legal check → final approval
- Document review — draft → review → feedback → sign-off
Without blueprints, somebody has to create each of those tasks by hand, chase the right person, and remember to hand the work over at every stage.
With blueprints you design the flow once and start it in one click — the hand-offs happen automatically.
Think of a blueprint as the recipe and a process as the meal. One recipe can be cooked as many times as you like, and each cooking is tracked separately.
Where to find Blueprints
Blueprints lives in the Workspace group of the left sidebar.
The menu item appears for admins, executives, and managers of a top-level department. If you don't see it, your role doesn't include process design — but you can still receive the tasks a process creates, and you may still be able to start processes from Start a Process.
The page header reads Blueprints — Process templates & running instances.
Templates and Processes
The Blueprints page has two tabs:
| Tab | What it contains |
|---|---|
| Templates | The blueprint designs — the process recipes you build and maintain |
| Processes (n) | The live and finished runs of those designs; the number next to the label is a live count |
If you have no designs yet, the Templates tab shows "No workflow templates yet". If nothing has been started yet, the Processes tab shows "No running processes yet — Start a process from a published template".
The blueprint lifecycle
A blueprint moves through three states. The state decides whether it can be started.
| State | What it means | Can you start it? |
|---|---|---|
| Draft | Still being designed. This is where every new blueprint begins. | No — the Start button stays disabled with the hint "Publish first" |
| Published | Finished and approved for use. | Yes |
| Archived | Retired. Hidden from the main list, but nothing is deleted. | No — restore it first |
The Templates tab has filter buttons for All, Draft, Published and Archived.
The All filter deliberately hides archived blueprints, so your day-to-day list stays clean. Switch to the Archived filter to see them.
Moving between states
| Move | How | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Draft → Published | Publish | Blueprint editor toolbar |
| Published → Draft | Unpublish | Blueprint editor toolbar |
| Draft or Published → Archived | Archive (archive icon on the card), then confirm | Template card |
| Archived → Draft | Restore | Template card |
Archiving asks you to confirm: "Archive this blueprint? It will be hidden from the main list but can be restored later." Restoring brings the blueprint back as a Draft, so you can review it before publishing again.
Unpublishing a blueprint sends it back to Draft, and a Draft cannot be started. Unpublish when you want to take a process out of service while you rework it.
Searching, filtering and sorting templates
Next to the status buttons, the Templates tab has tools for narrowing down and reordering a long list of templates.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Search box | Type to search templates by name, description or reference ID |
| Owner department | Show only templates owned by one department, or choose No department for templates that don't have one |
| Filter icon | Opens a panel with more filters and a sort order |
Every template can have an owner department — the department responsible for it (see the card table below). This is separate from which department a self-serve process is opened to, which is set under Visible to in Running Blueprints. You choose a template's owner department when you create it, and you can change it later from Edit details (see below).
Opening the filter icon reveals:
| Filter | Options |
|---|---|
| Steps | Any, 1–5, 6–10, 11+ — matches the step count shown on the card |
| Runs | Any, Never run, 1–5, 6+ — matches the run count shown on the card |
| Self-serve | Any, Enabled, Disabled — whether the template has been opened for your team to start on their own; see Start a Process |
| Last updated | Any time, Last 7 days, Last 30 days, Last 90 days, or a custom date range |
| Sort by | Recently updated, Oldest updated, Name (A–Z), Most runs, Most steps |
Choosing Custom under Last updated reveals From and To date fields. The panel shows a live count of how many templates match your choices, a Clear all link that resets them, and an Apply button to use them.
While any of these filters is active, the filter icon shows a small number badge, and a short summary of what's applied — like 1–5 steps or Last 7 days — appears above the templates. If your search or filters narrow the list, or a workspace simply has more templates than fit on one screen, a note above the cards tells you how many are currently shown. If nothing matches, the tab shows "No blueprints match the current filter." instead of the usual empty message.
What a template card tells you
Each design on the Templates tab is shown as a card:
| Item | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Name | The blueprint's name |
| Description | Optional short explanation, if one was written |
| Status badge | Draft, Published or Archived |
| Reference ID | A short code you can use when talking about this blueprint |
| v{number} | The version of the design |
| {number} steps | How many steps the design currently contains |
| {number} runs | How many times this blueprint has been started |
| Owner department | Who owns this template — shown as an Owner badge with the department's name, or No owner if none is set |
The buttons on the card depend on your permissions: designers see Edit to open the canvas, Edit details to change the name, description or owner department without opening the canvas, a green start button, and Archive (or Restore on an archived card). People with read-only access see a single View button.
:::info Who can change the owner Admins and executives can set any owner department. A department manager can only set it to a department they manage — if the current owner is a department they don't manage, the field is locked, with a note that you can only change the owner of departments you manage. :::
From template to process
Starting a published blueprint creates a process — one live copy of the design that runs on its own:
- You start the blueprint and give the process a title.
- Arketic creates the task(s) for the first step and assigns them to the chosen people.
- Those people are notified and see the work in their task list.
- As each step is completed, the next one starts automatically.
- Branches, waits and parallel steps are handled for you.
- When the last step finishes, the process is complete.
Each process is tracked separately, so ten new hires means ten independent onboarding processes — all built from the same design.
Learn how to start and follow a process in Running Blueprints.
Process statuses
On the Processes tab you can filter by status:
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Pending | Created and about to begin |
| Running | In progress — someone has work to do right now |
| Completed | Reached the end of the flow |
| Failed | Stopped because a step could not be completed |
| Cancelled | Stopped on purpose; remaining steps were cancelled |
You can also search processes by title, reference ID or blueprint name.
Step statuses inside a process
Open a process to see its step-by-step timeline. Every step carries its own status:
| Step status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Pending | Not reached yet |
| Active | Being worked on now |
| Waiting | Held until something else finishes |
| Completed | Done |
| Failed | Could not be completed |
| Skipped | Not needed on the path the process took |
| Cancelled | Stopped before it could be completed |
Blueprints and tasks
Blueprints and Tasks are two views of the same work:
- You design in Blueprints. Steps describe who does what, in what order.
- Your team works in Tasks. A step that needs a person creates a normal task — with a title, description, priority, deadline, completion conditions and file attachments, exactly like a task created by hand.
- Completing the task advances the process. When the assignee finishes their task, the process moves to the next step on its own.
This is why people who never open the Blueprints page still take part in blueprints every day: they simply receive tasks.
Not every step creates a task. Steps that organise the flow — waiting, branching, running things side by side — do their job in the background. See Step Types for which steps create work for a person.
Who can use blueprints
| Action | Members | Department managers | Admins / Executives |
|---|---|---|---|
| See the Blueprints menu | ❌ | ✅ (managers of a top-level department) | ✅ |
| View blueprints | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Create, edit, publish, archive | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Start a process from a blueprint | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Cancel a running process | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Receive tasks created by a process | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Start a process from Start a Process | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Members don't see the Blueprints section, but they are still part of the picture: they receive the tasks processes create, and they can start any process that has been opened to the team from Start a Process.
If you reach the Blueprints page without design permissions, it opens in View only mode — you can look at a design, but the create, edit, publish and start actions are hidden.
Before you start designing
:::caution Use a computer for the editor The blueprint editor needs precise mouse work and a large canvas, so it is available on desktop only. On a phone you'll see a Desktop Required screen instead of the canvas. Viewing your processes and working on the tasks they create works fine on any device. :::
A good first blueprint is short: pick a process your team already runs by hand, write down its four or five real steps, and design exactly those. You can always add branches, waiting periods and approvals later — an existing blueprint can be edited and republished at any time.