Building an Automation

Create an automation from Automations → New Automation, pick a starting point (a template or from scratch), and you land in the editor. The Edit tab has two views of the same draft, switched with the buttons at the top right:

• Form — the trigger, who can enter, exit goals, and a step list for automations that run one step after another.
• Diagram — every step on a canvas, including branches, splits, and Wait until steps.

Switching views keeps your edits; both work on one draft.

Name and description

The automation's name and description live in the page header — click the pen icon to edit them. They save immediately.

Trigger

The trigger is the event that starts the automation. Pick one from the dropdown — each option explains when it fires. Triggers fall into a few groups:

• Giving & forms — donation submitted, registration submitted, ticket order submitted, form submitted. These can optionally be limited to one specific form.
• Activity & lifecycle — contact created, recurring donation started or failed, installment paid, revenue recorded, mail campaign sent, contact unsubscribed via campaign.
• Audience & segment — subscribed to or unsubscribed from a specific audience, contact enters a segment.
• Pipeline — a card is added to a kanban board, or a card enters a specific stage.
• Scheduled — runs on a schedule you define, entering contacts that match a segment on each run.
• Custom conversion — your own website or app reports a conversion event through the tracking API.

Some triggers require a binding before you can turn the automation on: audience triggers need an audience, segment and scheduled triggers need a contact segment, scheduled triggers also need a schedule, and the card-enters-a-stage trigger needs a board and stage.

Card enters a stage fires once per card per stage, whether the card was created in that stage or moved into it. Moving a card out and back in doesn't start it again. Its Wait until the card has a contact box is ticked by default: a card with no contact waits, and the automation starts the moment a contact is added while the card is still in the stage. Adding another contact to a card that already has one never starts it. Untick the box for automations that don't need a person, like telling your team when a card reaches Closed Won.

Steps that act on a contact — emails, texts, audiences, tags, contact fields — can't be used with Card added to a board, because that trigger fires before the card's contact is added. Use Card enters a stage on the board's first stage instead.

Conditions

Conditions are optional filters on the triggering record. With no conditions, the automation fires for every event of the trigger's type. Add filters to narrow it — for example, donation amount at least 500, or contact has a certain tag. Conditions use the same filter builder as segments and reports. Someone whose record doesn't match is recorded as Skipped — Conditions not met.

Who can enter

Who can enter sets how often one person can go through the automation:

• Every time the trigger fires — a person can be in it more than once at the same time.
• One at a time — a person can enter again only after their previous entry ends.
• Only once — a person can enter a single time, ever.

For the first two, Leave a gap between entries sets the fewest days between one person's entries. Anyone turned away by these settings shows as Skipped, with the reason.

Exit goals

An exit goal names an event that means a person no longer needs this automation. The moment they meet it, they are taken out immediately, even mid-wait, and skip all remaining steps. Their entry shows Exited — Goal reached.

An exit goal is one of: Donation submitted, Registration submitted, Ticket order submitted, Form submitted, Custom conversion, or Contact is tagged. The hosted-form goals can optionally be limited to one specific form. A Contact is tagged goal also keeps out anyone who already has the tag, and is checked before each step, so tagging someone by hand, in bulk, by import, or from another automation takes them out.

Use exit goals on drip-style workflows so people stop receiving asks once they've done the thing you asked for. A donation-appeal series with an exit goal of "donation submitted" never emails someone who already gave.

Exit goals affect people currently inside the automation. They don't prevent someone from entering again later if the trigger fires again.

Take people out when they unsubscribe applies to automations started by an audience trigger: it ends a person's entry when they unsubscribe from, or leave, that audience. Their entry shows Exited — Unsubscribed.

Steps on the form

For an automation that runs one step after another, the form shows the steps as a list. Add steps with Add step, reorder them with the arrows, and delete with the trash icon. Each step card has an action picker — every action explains itself in the dropdown — followed by that action's settings. + Add delay after this step inserts a Wait step right after it. See Automation Steps for the full list.

An automation with branches, splits, or Wait until steps can't be shown as a list. Its trigger, entry, and goal settings stay on the form, and its steps are edited on the Diagram.

Steps on the diagram

The diagram shows the trigger at the top and every step below it, with the paths between them.

• Add a step — click + on any line between two steps, or at the end of a path, and pick a step. The list has a search box, with actions and routing steps (Branch, Random split, Wait until).
• Change a step — click it. Its settings open in the panel on the right, along with any problems to fix.
• Branch — choose what it decides on: The trigger record, The contact, or An earlier step's result. Each path has a name and its conditions; the first path whose conditions match wins, and anyone else goes down Otherwise. An earlier step's result can only come from a step every person passes through before the branch; if a step the branch reads failed for a person, their entry ends as Failed instead of taking a path.
• Random split — name the paths and give each a percentage; they must add up to 100%. A person always gets the same path.
• Wait until — hold people until something happens (a donation, a form, a tag, and so on) or a time limit passes. The two ways out are It happened and Timed out.
• Join paths — + at the end of a path also offers Or continue to an existing step, so two paths can lead into the same step. A path can't loop back to an earlier step. If the line already had steps after it, and nothing else leads to them, they're removed too — it asks first, and you can undo it. Removing a path from a branch or split works the same way.
• Remove a step — select it and press Delete, or use the trash icon in its panel. Whatever led to it now leads where its first path went. Removing a branch, split, or Wait until asks first, because steps that only its other paths reached go with it.
• Undo — Ctrl+Z (⌘Z on a Mac) undoes, and Ctrl+Shift+Z redoes.

Each step shows how many people are in it now, how many reached it, and how many failed. Each path out of a branch, split, or Wait until shows how many went that way.

Merge tags

Text a step sends — an email's subject and body, a text message, a staff notification, a task or card title — can include merge tags. Click the field's Insert merge tag button ({ }) to pick one. The picker offers:

• Standard and Contact Custom Fields — the same tags broadcasts use, filled for the contact in the automation.
• Audience (per-member values) — only when the trigger is tied to an audience; the values come from that audience.
• Trigger record — fields of the record that started the automation, such as a donation's amount.
• Earlier steps — results of steps that every person passes through before this one, such as the link to a card an earlier step created. Steps on only some paths, or after this one, aren't offered, because their results may not exist yet.

Add a fallback in the picker for a value that might be empty; without one, the tag shows nothing.

Emails

A Send email step shows its From, Reply-to, and Subject, plus a preview of the email. Edit email opens the email in the same builder used for broadcasts, on its own page, with Preview and Send test. Saving the email saves it into the draft; nobody receives the new version until you publish.

Saving and publishing

• Save draft saves the trigger, conditions, entry settings, goals, and steps as a draft. Nothing that runs changes. With unsaved edits, leaving the page — Cancel, the Enrollments tab, a link in the left menu, your browser's back button, or closing the browser tab — asks you to confirm first.
• Publish changes in the header makes the draft the version that runs: for new entries, and for people already in the automation from their next step. If people are waiting in a step you removed or changed to a different kind of step — or in a step whose next steps now include ones they already went through, since each step runs once per person — it asks where they should go: another step, finish there (completed), or take them out (exited, step removed). Problems that would stop the automation running are listed there and must be fixed first. For an automation that is off, Turn on after publishing publishes and turns it on in one go; if something would stop it being turned on, the window lists that instead, and you can still publish.
• Discard changes throws away the draft and goes back to the published version.

The On switch in the header controls whether the trigger is live, and it asks for confirmation both ways:

• Turning on checks the published version is complete — a trigger, at least one step, and any bindings the trigger needs. If something is missing, it says what.
• Turning off stops new entries immediately. People already in it are held at their step, and continue from there if you turn it back on.