Help · Automations

The automation editor

The editor is where you build an automation and look after it: the map of its steps, the panel that sets each one, and the menu that renames, copies, restores and deletes it.

The editor

An automation opens as a map: the Start card at the top and each step as a card below it. Press a card to set it up in a panel on the right. Everything you change is saved as you go, and none of it reaches anybody until you apply changes.

The map shows the whole thing: the Start card at the top, each step as a card below it, and a split's paths side by side until they meet again at Paths meet again. A path that stops without meeting the others ends in Ends here. Each card names its kind and its number — Wait · step 3 — says in one line what it does, and carries a small colored word for how it is set: Live, Manual, Draft, Off or To set up. Every kind of step carries one, a wait and a split included, because a draft wait does not wait and a draft split sends nobody down any path — that changes where people go, so it belongs on the map and not only inside a step.

Moving around the map

• Pan by dragging the empty space, with two fingers on a trackpad, or with the scroll wheel (hold Shift to go sideways). On a touch screen, swipe.
• Zoom with the zoom controls in a bottom corner of the map, with a pinch, or with Ctrl or ⌘ and your scroll wheel. It goes from 25% to 200%.
• Fit to screen shows the whole automation at once. The editor opens fitted where the whole thing can still be read; a very large automation opens on its start instead, at a size you can read, and you move down from there.
• The map in the bottom right corner shows the whole automation in miniature — a gray block for each step, with an outline around the part on your screen. Click it, or drag across it, to move there. It only appears when the automation is bigger than what fits on your screen, so a short automation never has one.
• Find a step is a search over every step, by number, kind and what it does, with the ones you opened most recently first. Choose one and the map takes you to it.

Opening a step always brings its card to the middle of the space that is left, zoomed in far enough to read. So does choosing one from Find a step, and every Show and Go to it in the Applying changes and enabling chapter.

With the map itself focused, + and − zoom, 0 fits it to the screen, and the arrow keys move around. Tab goes through the cards in reading order — top to bottom, the left path first.

Adding a step

Every line between two steps has a + on it. Press it and choose what to add there. Or open the Add a step tray at the top left and drag a step onto the map: every place it can go lights up as you drag, and the one under the pointer says where it is — after a step, first on the path of a split, or where the paths meet again. Near an edge the map moves to follow you. Escape, or letting go away from a lit place, adds nothing.

Drag a step onto the automation, or press one to pick its place.

Pressing a step in the tray instead of dragging it lets you pick its place with the keyboard: the arrow keys walk the places it can go, Enter puts it there, and Escape puts nothing anywhere. Tab moves between the steps in the tray, and Steps brings the tray back after you close it.

A few steps ask you one thing before they are added, because they cannot exist without it. A Send email step asks for its email first — a template or a new one. Add to list and Remove from list ask Which list?, Team alert asks Who should be told?, and Update property asks Which property?. Cancel there and nothing is added. Every other step is added at once and opens so you can set it up.

A new step always starts as a draft:

Nobody is sent this step. Everything else in the automation still runs.

Moving and deleting

Drag a card to a lit place, or use the … at its top right: Move lets you pick the new place with the arrow keys and Enter, and Delete asks first. With a card focused, Space picks it up too. On a touch screen, press and hold a card until it lifts, then drag it. A step you move keeps its own setting — a draft stays a draft, and a live step stays live.

A split is the one step that does not move on its own, because its paths would have to move with it:

A split moves with its paths — delete and add it again, or move the steps around it.

Deleting a split deletes the steps on its paths, and it says so before it does:

The steps on its paths are deleted with it. Steps after the point where the paths meet again stay.

Opening a step

Press a card and its settings open in a panel over the right-hand side of the map (under the map, on a narrow screen). The panel's head names the step and carries the same … menu as the card, and Close or Escape puts it away. A split's path, and the checkout disclosure on the Start card, open inside the same panel with a link back to where you were.

A Send email step's panel opens on a small preview of the email itself. Press it and the email appears beside its settings at the size it will be received. Close the step to go back to the map.

Saving

Everything you change is saved as you go, into a working copy. The mark beside the name says where that has got to — Saving…, Saved, or, if something went wrong, Not saved yet — still trying. None of it reaches anybody. The version people receive is untouched until you apply changes. While what you have saved differs from that version, the mark says so too — Saved 4:02 PM · not applied yet.

Undo and redo

The two arrows at the start of the row at the top, Undo and Redo, take back what you just did and put it back again — an added, moved or deleted step, a path, or a change in a step's panel. Typing is taken back a phrase at a time, not a letter at a time. Cmd-Z (Ctrl-Z on Windows) undoes too, and Shift-Cmd-Z or Ctrl-Y redoes; while you are typing in a box, those keys undo your typing in that box instead.

An undo changes your working copy and is saved like any other change. It never applies changes, and it never enables or disables anything. Undoing a new Send email step takes the step off the map but keeps its email, so Redo brings the step back with the same email.

Applying changes, or restoring a version, starts undo again from there. Undo is paused while you are seeing the automation as one person, and a deleted automation has none.

How many are waiting at each step

On an automation whose changes have been applied, the foot of each card says how many people are at that step right now — 1,234 waiting here. That counts everyone whose next step it is, everyone partway through it if it is a wait, and everyone held there by one of your own rules, such as the frequency limit (see Held is not lost, in the What an automation is doing chapter). A Manual message says separately how many are waiting for somebody on your team to send it. A card with nobody at it says nothing, and a step you have added since changes were last applied shows nothing either, because nobody can be at a step that is not running yet.

The numbers are read when the editor opens, again after you apply changes, and again whenever you come back to the window — never on a timer, so a number can be a few minutes old. If they could not be read, a line on the map says so, rather than leaving empty cards that would look like nobody is there.

Renaming one, and making a copy

Press the name at the top of the editor to rename the automation; two automations in one store cannot share a name. Make a copy, in the editor’s menu, gives you a new automation with the same start and steps, not applied yet.

The name at the top of the editor is the name. Press it, type, and press Enter or click away to keep it; Escape puts the old one back. An empty name is refused and the name you had stands. Two automations in one store cannot share a name.

Make a copy is in the editor’s menu, beside Versions. It gives you a new automation that starts the same way, with the same steps and a copy of each email, named after the one you copied, and it opens the copy so you know it happened. The copy is not applied yet: it is not enabled, it has nothing to run, and nobody is in it.

Copying is also the way past the one thing that cannot change. Once an automation has been enabled what starts it is fixed, because the people already inside it entered that way. The rest of the Start card still changes — who it narrows to, how often somebody can re-enter — but the starting event does not. Make a copy and change it there.

If the automation you are copying mails people who reached checkout, the copy still needs somebody to read and accept that position on it. A signature is not a thing that copies.

Versions

Every time changes are applied, that version is kept. The Versions drawer in the automation’s menu lists them with who applied each one and when.

It covers which steps exist and how they are set. An email’s own history lives with that email, in its editor.

Restore on a row loads that version back into your working copy. It applies nothing and it mails nobody — what people receive keeps running until you apply changes again. It replaces the whole working copy, so any change you had not applied is gone, and the question says so before it happens.

Deleting one

Delete is at the foot of the editor’s menu, and it is the one act in the editor that cannot be undone. Everybody moving through the automation stops where they are and gets nothing more from it, it comes off your Automations screen, and there is no way to bring it back. It asks first and says all of that before it does anything.

Delete vs Archive

There are two of these behind the one word, and the question tells you which one you are about to get. If the automation’s changes have never been applied and nothing has ever run in it, there is no history to keep, so Delete really deletes: the automation and its steps leave your store and the question says so. Everything else — anything whose changes you have applied, even once, and anything people have moved through — is kept instead. It comes off your Automations screen and stops sending, and you can still open it and read what was in it. Either way, nothing you have already sent is touched.

Deleting from inside the editor takes you back to your Automations screen, because the automation you were editing is not there any more.

What it has already sent stays. Those emails are still in your reporting and still on each person’s profile, where the row names the automation and says it was deleted. You can still open a deleted automation and read what was in it — its page says View the steps, and the editor opens with everything showing and nothing to change: no Apply changes, no way to add or move a step, and a line at the top saying why. If what you actually want is for an automation to stop sending for now, that is Disable, and a disabled automation can be enabled again.