Build an automation on the canvas

An automation is a trigger and then a series of steps, drawn left to right on a canvas. The trigger is what starts it; the steps are what happens. You build it as a draft, test it, publish it, and then turn it on.

Building it

1. 1Go to Dashboard → Automations and click "New automation". Give it a name you will recognise in a list of twenty.
2. 2Click the first step to choose what starts this automation — a form being submitted, a contact joining a list, a date arriving.
3. 3Add the next step from the "+" on the connector, or drop one onto the canvas and drag a line to it.
4. 4Click any step to open the panel on the right, where you set what it actually does.
5. 5Press "Save draft" whenever you want. Nothing you save is live yet.

Problems before they cost you anything

A step that is missing something it needs is marked on the canvas, and the header counts them for you. Some are hard problems that stop you publishing — a step with no message written yet. Others are warnings: a step that creates something with no path for when it fails, a wait with no end. You can publish over a warning, but read it first — that is the exact list of things that go wrong at 2am.

Draft and published

What you edit is always the draft. What runs is the published version. Press "Publish" and you get a plain-language list of what is about to change before you confirm it — new steps, removed steps, anything rewired. Runs already in flight finish on the version they started on.

Turning it on

Publishing does not switch it on. The On/Off switch in the header does that, and it will not move until every step has been seen working in a test at least once. If it refuses, it tells you which steps it has never seen work.

Going back

Every publish is kept. Open the version history in the header to see them all and roll back to any of them — useful when the change you made yesterday turns out to be the reason nobody got their confirmation email.