Automations

An automation sends messages to one contact at a time when something happens to them. It runs continuously while active.

Find them under Campaigns → Automations. An Editor or Admin presses Create Automation to make an empty draft called "Automation n" and open it.

Building blocks

An automation is a tree of actions:

Action	What it does
Email	Sends an email
SMS	Sends a text message
Wait	Pauses for a set time
Condition	Checks something and follows a yes or no branch
Webhook	Posts a payload to your own URL

A condition can test a contact field, whether a previous message was delivered, opened or clicked, whether an event happened within a window, or whether an order was placed since the journey began.

The sequence map

Open an automation to see its sequence as a map, top to bottom. It starts with a When box that says what starts the automation (for example “The tag “VIP” is added”, or “No trigger yet”); click it to edit the triggers and entry rules, and each action sits under the one before it, joined by an arrow. An email shows a small preview of the message, an SMS a text bubble, a wait a striped bar. A condition splits the map into a Yes lane and a No lane; click a lane's name to fold it away.

• Add an action with the + on any arrow, or with Add action at the end of a lane. On a new automation, use Add the first action under the When box. What was already in that place carries on after the new action.
• Open an action by clicking its box. Its settings open inside the box, or in a panel at the bottom of the screen on a phone. A box that says Needs setup has to be finished before the automation can run.
• Move an action by dragging the dotted grip on its box to a place marked Drop here, or open its ⋯ menu, choose Move… and then Place here. A place that would make the journey loop back is never offered. A condition takes its No lane with it.
• Delete an action from its ⋯ menu. You are asked first, because its content is deleted with it.

Every change to the map is saved as you make it. You can edit an automation while it is a draft, active or paused; only an archived one is read-only. Changes to an active or paused automation apply to contacts already in it. An action that contacts have already run, or are about to run, cannot be deleted: take the automation out of use by archiving it instead. Once an automation is active or paused, contacts keep running what they can reach, so an action they can reach has to stay finished: it cannot be saved with blank fields, and a new email, SMS or webhook cannot be added to the map, because it would be blank at first (a new wait can). Write emails, texts and webhooks while the automation is still a draft. Activating or resuming an automation is refused while an action in its map is not set up, so finish every box first. On a large map, the small overview in the corner shows where you are; click it to jump.

Triggers

An automation can have several triggers. Any one of them starts a journey.

Trigger	Fires when
A contact is created	Any new contact
A form is submitted	A specific form is used
A contact opts in	A contact opts in to a channel
A tag is added	A specific tag is applied
A date field comes round	A date custom field plus an offset (in days or weeks) reaches today

With a store connected you also get: an order is placed, an order is completed, an order is cancelled, a product is purchased, a contact places their first order, and a cart is abandoned (after 1 to 720 hours of no activity).

Triggers are edited in the Triggers panel of the automation's page with Add a trigger, and saved on their own. An automation needs at least one trigger before it can be activated.

Lifecycle

Draft → Active ⇄ Paused → Archived

• An Admin changes the status with Activate, Pause, Resume and Archive, on the automation's row in the list and at the top of its page. Archive asks you to confirm.
• Triggers, entry rules and actions can be edited until the automation is archived (see the notes on the sequence map above).
• Pausing does not stop journeys already running. Archiving does.

Rules that always apply

Every send checks suppression, consent for the channel and the sender before it goes out. A contact who is not allowed to receive a message skips that step. The Entry rules panel controls whether a contact may enter the same automation again (Once ever, Once at a time or Every time), and lets you put automations in a named exclusion group with a priority, so a contact is in only one of the group at a time.