What is an automation?
An automation is a workflow that runs on its own when something happens in your app. It has one trigger and one or more steps, and it does the follow-up work you would otherwise do by hand.
What an automation is made of
- A trigger decides when it runs: a record is created, updated or deleted, a schedule comes around, another service calls a webhook URL, or you press a button.
- Steps are what it does: look up or change records, send an email, notify your team, ask AI to write or decide something, run an action in a connected app, or branch on a condition.
You see both on a visual flow map. The trigger sits at the top and each step is a card below it, connected in the order they run.
Examples
Say you run a pool-service company. You could have automations that:
- Email the customer a confirmation and notify the assigned technician when a new job is created.
- Summarize last week's completed jobs every Monday at 9 AM and email the summary to you.
- Create an invoice record when a job's status changes to "Completed".
How you build one
You do not assemble the steps by hand. You describe what you want in plain language and the AI builder creates the trigger and the steps for you. After that you can test it with a dry run, read its run history, and ask the AI to change any step. See Create an automation by describing it.
Where to find automations
Open Tools in the sidebar and choose Automations. The page has two tabs:
- Automations lists every automation with its trigger, its status and when it last ran. You can group automations into folders.
- Runs shows recent runs across all automations, with a success rate and a chart of the last 14 days.
Statuses
Each automation shows one of four statuses next to its name:
- Draft: created but not turned on yet.
- Active: runs whenever its trigger fires.
- Paused: kept, but it will not run on its trigger.
- Error: the automation hit a problem. Open it and check the run history.
Use Activate and Deactivate in the automation's header to turn it on and off.
Which plans include automations
Automations are included on the Starter plan and above. They are not part of the Free plan. Each run uses one run credit from your workspace's monthly pool. See Run credits and AI credits for automations.