Automations

An automation is a workflow that runs by itself when something happens in your account. You pick a trigger, optionally narrow it with conditions, and choose the steps that run — the automation then handles every matching contact or record without any manual work.

A few examples of what automations can do:

• Tag every donor whose gift crosses a threshold
• Add new contacts to a welcome audience and send them an email series
• Notify your staff the moment a major gift arrives
• Move donors onto a kanban board for personal follow-up

Understanding automations

An automation has three building blocks:

• Trigger — the event that starts it: a donation is submitted, a contact is created, a contact enters a segment, a schedule fires, and more.
• Conditions — optional filters that decide which triggering records qualify (for example, only donations of $500 or more).
• Steps — the actions that run, in order, with optional delays between them.

An automation can also declare an exit goal — an event that pulls a contact out of the workflow early, such as making a donation.

The automations list

The list at Automations has two tabs:

• User created — automations you built. These are fully editable.
• System — automations the platform manages for you, created by form settings such as a donation form's subscribe checkbox or a custom form's audience attachment. Each row shows the form that owns it. System automations are edited through that form's settings, not through the automations editor.

Active vs. draft

Every automation is either active or a draft:

• Active — the trigger is live. Matching events start the workflow.
• Draft — nothing fires. Use drafts to build and refine before going live.

You switch between the two with the Active toggle on the automation's page. Activating requires a complete definition — a trigger and at least one step. See Building an Automation for details.

Deleting an automation

An automation can only be deleted while it has no history. Once it has run even once — or has enrolled anyone — deleting it would take its runs and enrollments with it, so it is kept instead. Switch it to draft with the Active toggle: the trigger stops firing immediately and everything it has already done stays on the Runs and Enrollments tabs.

Contacts who have opted out

Email and SMS steps never send to a contact who has unsubscribed, been suppressed, or is marked deceased — the same rule broadcasts follow. The step is recorded as skipped, with the reason, on the enrollment's history, so a contact can move through the rest of the workflow without receiving that message. Staff notification steps are not affected: they go to fixed addresses you set, not to the contact.

Test fire

The Test fire button on an automation's page runs a dry preview against a sample record. It shows whether the conditions match and which steps would fire, without executing anything or sending anything.

Where to go next

If you want to...	Go to
Build or edit an automation	Building an Automation
See what each step type does	Automation Steps
Understand who's flowing through a workflow	Enrollments & Runs