K18 had already done the hard work of building a monday.com workflow for tracking salon class requests. The platform was in use. The intake was there. What wasn’t there was automation for everything that happened after a request came in — and with nearly 70 certified PROs and over 140 salons coordinating class schedules around the world, that gap was generating a significant volume of manual email work every day.
OrangeDot came in to close that gap — and in doing so, transformed how K18’s PRO education program operates.
What We’ll Cover
- About K18 and their PRO education program for salon partners
- Challenge 1: Class logistics handled entirely by hand after intake — PRO confirmations, rescheduling, and communications all manual
- Why OrangeDot went beyond native monday.com and recommended SuperForm and SuperMail
- How OrangeDot built two automated workflows covering PRO approval and salon confirmation
- The combined impact: four fewer emails per request, hours saved weekly, and full alignment across 70 PROs and 140+ salons
About the Client
K18 is a biotech-powered haircare brand with a presence in 100+ countries, over 20 billion TikTok views, and a product philosophy built around science-backed, biology-first haircare. As part of K18’s commitment to excellence in the professional channel, the brand requires all stylists who sell and recommend K18 products — referred to as PROs — to complete a rigorous education and certification program.
Once certified, K18 PROs visit salons to educate stylists on the science of hair damage and how K18 products are uniquely designed to address it. Salons can host different types of classes to train their teams, and these education sessions are a central part of how K18 builds and maintains its professional salon network. Managing the logistics of those classes — across 70 PROs and more than 140 salons worldwide — requires a process that can move quickly, communicate clearly, and keep every party aligned.
A Good Foundation with a Manual Logistics Problem
K18 had been successfully using monday.com to track incoming class requests from salons. That intake workflow was working. But once a request came in, everything else was handled manually — and at the volume of a global PRO education program, that manual work was adding up to a significant and unnecessary operational burden.
Once a salon submitted a class request, the workflow stopped automating and the manual work began. A PRO had to accept and confirm the request, propose an alternative time if they weren’t available, and then send detailed class information back to the salon and the individual stylists who would be attending. Each of those steps required someone on the team to manually compose and send an email — or multiple emails, depending on the back-and-forth involved in settling on a date and time.
Across 70 PROs and 140+ active salons, this translated into a high volume of routine, repetitive email coordination that was consuming time the team could better spend preparing for and delivering great classes. And because the communication happened outside monday.com, there was no centralized record of what had been confirmed, what was still pending, or what had changed — creating potential for confusion between PROs, salons, and stylists about class details.
K18 needed a way to automate the entire post-intake process — from PRO approval and scheduling confirmation through to the communications that kept all parties informed — without leaving monday.com to do it.
A workflow that automates intake but not follow-through captures data without reducing work. Every manual email sent after a class request comes in is a task that a well-configured automation would handle in seconds. At the scale of a global education program, the accumulated time cost of those manual communications becomes a meaningful operational inefficiency — and a source of coordination confusion when information gets separated from the system that tracks it.
Going Beyond Native monday.com: SuperForm and SuperMail
During discovery, OrangeDot identified that solving K18’s class logistics challenge would require capabilities beyond what monday.com’s native features could provide. Two specific requirements pushed past the platform’s built-in functionality: updating existing items through forms (rather than creating new ones), and sending HTML-formatted, hyperlinked emails with file attachments directly from within monday.com.
SuperForm for advanced form functionality
SuperForm is an advanced form solution that extends monday.com’s native form capabilities. Unlike standard monday.com forms, which create new items on submission, SuperForm supports updating existing items in a board — which was essential for the PRO approval workflow, where a PRO needs to respond to an existing class request record rather than generating a new one. SuperForm also supports more sophisticated formatting and conditional logic, enabling more complex forms than monday.com’s native tool allows.
SuperMail for HTML-designed automated emails
SuperMail allows teams to create and send HTML-designed, professionally formatted emails directly within monday.com — including hyperlinks and file attachments from either a computer or a monday.com Files column. For K18, this meant that class confirmation emails sent to PROs and salons could be polished, on-brand, and information-rich, without anyone leaving the platform to compose and send them manually.
Workflow 1: PRO Approval and Scheduling
PRO receives and responds to class requests through SuperForm
When a salon submits a class request, the PRO assigned to that salon receives an automated notification and is presented with a SuperForm to review the request details and respond. The PRO can accept the request as submitted, confirm specific class details like days and times, or indicate that they’re unavailable during the requested period — all without any manual email composition on either side.
Built-in rejection and rescheduling flow
If the PRO isn’t available during the requested time, the workflow automatically notifies the salon and presents them with the option to select a new date or time. This back-and-forth — which had previously required multiple manually composed emails — is now handled entirely within the automated workflow, with each response updating the existing class request record in monday.com.
Workflow 2: Salon and PRO Confirmation via SuperMail
Automated confirmation sent to all parties simultaneously
Once the PRO approves a class request and the scheduling details are confirmed, SuperMail automatically sends a beautifully formatted confirmation email to both the PRO and the salon at the same time. The email includes all relevant class details — date, time, location, class type, and any attached materials — ensuring that every stakeholder has the same information from the same source, in a format that’s easy to read and reference.
One email, full alignment, complete paper trail
Including both the PRO and the salon on the same confirmation email eliminates the version fragmentation that comes from sending separate communications to each party. Everyone sees the same confirmed details, nobody is waiting for a follow-up, and because the communication originates from within monday.com, the full exchange is automatically logged against the class request record — creating a searchable paper trail of every communication for every class.
The Combined Impact
Four Emails Eliminated Per Class Request
On average, the new automated workflows have eliminated four emails per class request — the back-and-forth that had previously been required to confirm availability, agree on scheduling details, and communicate class information to all parties. Across 70 PROs and 140+ active salons, that reduction compounds into a significant weekly time savings that’s now redirected toward class preparation and delivery.
Hours Saved Weekly Across the Team
By fully automating the PRO approval and salon confirmation process, K18 has reclaimed hours of manual email work each week. The team no longer has to send individual emails to salons or worry about the back-and-forth that scheduling used to require. The time that was going into email coordination is now going into the education program itself.
Full Alignment Between PROs and Salons
With both parties receiving the same confirmation email at the same time, the confusion that used to arise from separate communications — each potentially containing slightly different details — has been eliminated. PROs and salons are always working from the same confirmed information, and any scheduling change triggers the same automated loop that keeps both sides updated simultaneously.
monday.com as the Complete Source of Truth
All class request data, communication history, and scheduling details are now centralized within monday.com. The paper trail that had previously lived across individual email inboxes now lives in the system that manages the entire workflow — accessible to anyone who needs it, searchable, and always current. PROs have responded with tremendous enthusiasm to the new setup, and K18 has seen measurable improvements in visibility, organization, and overall confidence in how their education program operates.
70 PROs and 140+ salons coordinating through one automated system · Four emails eliminated per class request · PRO availability and salon rescheduling handled automatically · Full communication paper trail logged in monday.com
FAQs
Why use SuperForm and SuperMail instead of native monday.com features?
monday.com’s native form tool creates new items on submission — which works well for intake, but not for workflows where external users need to update an existing record (like a PRO responding to a class request that’s already in the system). SuperForm fills that gap by supporting item updates through external forms with more complex formatting and logic. Similarly, monday.com’s native email notifications are functional but limited in design and formatting. SuperMail enables the creation of HTML-designed, professionally formatted emails with hyperlinks and attachments — giving K18’s confirmation emails a polished, on-brand appearance that reflects the quality of their education program.
How does the rescheduling workflow handle multiple rounds of back-and-forth?
The rejection and rescheduling loop is built to handle iterative scheduling as naturally as possible. When a PRO indicates unavailability, the salon receives a notification and is presented with a new time selection form. That selection triggers another review and confirmation loop until all parties agree on a time. Because each exchange updates the same class request record in monday.com rather than creating a new thread, the full scheduling history is captured in one place without any manual record-keeping required.
Can this type of workflow be extended to other parts of K18’s education program?
Yes. The SuperForm and SuperMail workflow architecture OrangeDot built is modular, which means the same approach can be applied to other points in the PRO education lifecycle — post-class follow-ups, certification renewals, resource distribution, or any other touchpoint that currently involves manual email coordination. The foundation is in place; extending it to new use cases is a matter of building additional workflows on the same infrastructure.
Does this work for PROs and salons in different countries and time zones?
Yes. The automated workflows operate independently of geography — notifications are triggered by system events (a form submission, a status change, an approval) rather than by someone manually sending an email during business hours. PROs and salons in different time zones can move through the approval and confirmation loop asynchronously, with each party receiving the relevant notification when they’re online and ready to respond.
Final Thoughts
K18 had already built a solid foundation with monday.com. What OrangeDot contributed wasn’t a replacement — it was the automation layer that made the existing system work end to end. Sometimes the most impactful work isn’t starting from scratch; it’s identifying exactly where a good process breaks down and building the automation that closes the gap.
For K18, that gap was everything that happened after a class request came in. Four emails, multiple back-and-forth exchanges, and hours of coordination work every week — all of it now handled automatically, while the team focuses on the education program itself.
If your team has an existing monday.com setup that’s working partially but leaving manual work on the table, we can help you take it further. Talk to an OrangeDot expert →