Help · Automations

What starts an automation

The Start card decides who enters an automation and when: the event, list or form that starts it, the rules that narrow who may enter, and whether somebody can go through it again.

What starts it

The Start card sits at the top of the map, and it is the automation’s one setting. Opening it shows everything about how people enter and leave.

Each part of the Start card is its own bordered card. A card's title sits on its top row with the card's one action beside it, what is true now comes next, and a short gray note at the bottom says how it works.

The first card asks What starts this automation? and has one field. Type in it to search your events, your lists and your forms together:

Your search matches the name of the event, list or form, so type Newsletter, not Joins. Once you choose what starts it, the card folds to one line — Fulfilled Order · From your store, or Joins the list: Newsletter — with Change beside the title. A form start opens on its cards instead, so you can tick more forms (below). Change brings the field back, with the note Changing what starts this automation keeps all your steps as they are. With nothing typed, events come first, then your lists (the ones with the most people first), then your forms. A Back in stock form is not offered — it has its own messages.

The Start card's icon says where its event comes from, with the same marks as Analytics → Metrics: the Shopify bag when it counts only your store's events, the integration mark when only an integration's, the form mark when only your forms'. A start that counts more than one place, or has no event yet, keeps the lightning bolt; a list start and a form start wear the list and email marks they have on a new automation.

The Start card on the map says the same thing the folded card does: the event's own name — Fulfilled Order — with where it comes from on the line under it, or Joins the list: Newsletter, or Submits the form: Signup. The name is your store's own, so an event that is not something the person did, like Out for Delivery, is never worded as if they did it.

A new automation answers Can a profile enter again? with Yes, every time the event happens. Change it on the Start card if somebody should go through only once.

The field offers every event this app can produce, not only the ones your store has had. That is what lets you build the delivery automation before the first delivery: a name your store has not recorded yet is offered and marked no activity yet, which is a fact about your store rather than about the event. Names your own data already carries are offered too, including whatever an integration has been sending you. The events your store records most come first — the busiest of the last 30 days at the top — and every other name follows alphabetically. Each name your store has recorded carries small marks at the right of its row saying where it has arrived from — the Shopify bag for your store, the integration mark for an integration, the form mark for your forms — the same marks as Analytics → Metrics; point at one to read it in words. A name that has arrived from more than one place carries more than one mark. Imported history is excluded: an import never starts an automation, so it gets no mark, and a name only an import ever brought is not offered. If this automation already starts on such a name, it stays, marked imported, starts nobody — pick an event that still arrives. The field shows the event you chose; click in it and it empties, ready for you to type, and the list under it narrows to the names that match, then pick one with a click, or with the arrow keys and Enter. Escape puts back the event you had.

The note under the field says the same thing in fewer words:

Most used first. Type to search every event your store has.

The event is named exactly as your data records it, never re-worded.

The parcel events, and the one thing to know before you build on them. A shipment reports its progress in nine steps, and each one is offered as its own event: Label Printed, Label Purchased, Confirmed Shipment, In Transit, Out for Delivery, Attempted Delivery, Ready for Pickup, Delivered Shipment and Shipment Failure. They all describe one parcel, so they all carry the same tracking number, and Delivered Shipment is the one that says it arrived — it is named that way so it is never mistaken for Delivered, which on a report of yours means an email the email provider accepted.

A tracking number added or changed is its own event — Shipping Updated. It is recorded when a shipment's tracking number is added or replaced after we already have that shipment on record. The first number a shipment ships with is not a change, so it never starts this event: that one belongs to Fulfilled Order and Partially Fulfilled. A shipment that only moves on — in transit, out for delivery — with the same number does not start it either. Some changes can be missed, such as one your store reports before the shipment itself. It carries what the other parcel events carry, plus the number it replaced, as Previous tracking number. A new shipment on an order that already shipped starts it too — for example, one that replaces a shipment you canceled — unless its tracking number was already sent for that order; it names the canceled shipment's number when exactly one was canceled. Canceling a shipment never starts it.

An order you call off is its own event too — Cancelled Order, the moment you cancel one in your store. It keeps the spelling the other service gives it, so a store arriving from there finds one history rather than two.

So is a refund — Refunded Order, when you refund an order in your store, a partial refund included, under the same name as history you imported. Your store's refund does not say who the shopper is, so we take that from the order it refunds: a refund of an order we never recorded — one placed before your store was connected, and not read back since — is not recorded either.

So are returns — Requested Return, Return Approved, Return Declined, Return Canceled and Return Closed, as a return moves through your store, whichever app you use for returns, as long as it records the return in Shopify. Like a refund, a return is recorded only for an order we already have. The first time you open the app after this arrived, your store asks you to allow Carpe Messaging to read returns; until you allow it, only Return Canceled and Return Closed are recorded. We don't send return emails — your returns app or your store does — but you can start an automation from a return, for example a note after Requested Return.

Not every carrier reports every step, and some report none. These events are only as good as what your carrier tells your store, so an event here can sit at no activity yet for ever on a store whose carrier is quiet. Check the Metrics page before you build a sequence a customer would notice the absence of.

Starting when somebody signs up, or submits a form

The Welcome starts when somebody signs up, and Evergreen when somebody submits a form. For both, the Start card shows a card for each of your forms, and you tick the ones that start the automation. For a Welcome the first line says:

Who gets this welcome? Tick the places people sign up.

Nothing is ticked for you, and there is no "all forms" choice: a form you made for a contest or a quiz is simply left unticked. Tick as many as you like. Until at least one is ticked, Apply changes is refused with Pick at least one place people sign up. This welcome starts for nobody until you do. — or, for a form start, Pick at least one form. This automation starts for nobody until you do.

Each card shows the form's name, a tag — Popup or Embedded — whether it is Live, Paused or a Draft, and how many people submitted it in the last 30 days: 214 people submitted it in the last 30 days. That is the Submitted number on Analytics → Form performance — people, not button presses, and not only people who were new. A Back in stock card has no number, because that report counts sign-up forms only. Live forms come first, the busiest at the top, then paused forms, then drafts. A draft's card has a dashed edge and says Starts once you publish it. If the count could not be worked out in time, the card says Submitted: not available right now — it never shows a 0 it did not count.

Past six forms, Show 3 more forms (the number is how many are hidden) opens the rest, and a Search your forms box above the cards narrows them by name. A form you have ticked always shows. A ticked form that has been deleted or archived stays on the list, marked No longer on your store, until you untick it. One automation can have at most 50 ticked; at 50, the other boxes cannot be ticked and the card says 50 are ticked, the most one automation can have. Untick one to tick another.

A Welcome also has a Shopify card, Checkout and store accounts: people who tick the box to get email at checkout, or sign up for an account in your store. Its card says:

Sign-ups that look like bots are not welcomed.

A sign-up looks like a bot when the person checked out without visiting your store first, has never placed an order, and has no Shopify tags. A new sign-up from your Shopify store by somebody who has not bought starts up to 15 minutes later, because Shopify can report a checkout up to about 14 minutes after your site saw it, and the bot check needs to see it. The moment they place an order, get a Shopify tag or are marked This is a person, or we see that their checkout followed a visit to your store, they start at once. Buyers, and sign-ups on your own forms, start at once. The same is true of every automation that starts on a sign-up — including one that starts on the event Consented to Email — and nothing on the automation shows it. Their profile, their consent and the sign-up on their activity are recorded as soon as Shopify tells us, and campaigns are not affected. If you know a person is real, open their profile and choose This is a person: the bot check never turns them away again. It does not send the welcome they missed, though — their consent is already on, and people already on your list are not welcomed again. A Welcome also offers your Back in stock form, tagged that way, because the box on it that asks for your emails is a sign-up; a form start does not, because a back-in-stock request is not a form submission.

To see the bot check at work, go to your segments screen and open the built-in segments Waiting for the bot check and Turned away as not a person. The first holds who is waiting right now. The second holds everybody it has turned away, except anybody the check would now let through — a buyer, somebody with a Shopify tag or a visit before a checkout, or anybody you have marked This is a person; you can export, pause or delete the people in it. The first is for looking at only.

People already on your list are not welcomed again. A Welcome starts only when somebody's email consent is new, so somebody who already gave it and fills in another form is not sent a second welcome.

With no forms yet, the card says No sign-up forms yet. and offers Make a form. A Welcome still has its Shopify card.

Change on a sign-up or form start keeps what you ticked. In the field, each form says what choosing it does — Add Spring popup to the places on a Welcome, Add Spring popup to the forms on a form start — and choosing it adds it to the cards, ticked, without swapping out the ones already ticked. A form that is already ticked is not in the list. Signs up on a form or in Shopify and Submits a form are choices in the field too.

Choosing a different kind of start — an event, a list, or Submits a form on a Welcome — asks first, and names only what you would lose from what is actually ticked. A Welcome with one form and the Shopify place ticked says:

Changing this loses the form you ticked, the Shopify place for checkout and store accounts, and the check that keeps out sign-ups that look like bots.

With nothing ticked yet, it says only:

Changing this loses the check that keeps out sign-ups that look like bots.

The box asks Change to Placed Order?, naming what you chose. Press Change it to go ahead, or Keep it as it is.

Turning a Welcome into Submits a form keeps the forms you ticked. It warns that the automation then starts for anyone who submits one of them, even somebody who already gave consent, and that it loses the Shopify place, any Back in stock form, and the bot check. Turning a form start into Signs up on a form or in Shopify keeps your ticked forms as places, and warns that somebody who already gave consent and submits one of them will no longer start it.

Once a Welcome or a form start has been enabled, you can still tick and untick. What kind of start it is stays fixed, but the places and forms do not. A tick is saved as a change; it starts anybody only once you press Apply changes. The card says:

A place you tick starts this welcome for new sign-ups once you apply your changes. To start it some other way, make a copy.

Nobody who signed up before you applied it is sent it.

There is no rule on the cards about what somebody chose on the form. To start for only some of the people who sign up, use the Automation filter card under it, as its note says:

To start only for some people (Pet is penguins), add a rule under Automation filter.

Starting when somebody gives consent to your texts

Consented to Text Messages is recorded the moment somebody becomes a person you can text — they typed the code back on one of your forms, Shopify saw them agree at your checkout or in your store, or they replied START. It comes from your forms, your store and people's own texts — marked From a text message — never from an integration, and an import never records it. The Welcome text starting point starts on it; the Text messages page lists exactly when it is and is not recorded.

Starting on a Shopify tag

Tagging somebody in your store is an event here, and an automation can start on it. Two events cover it — Tag Added and Tag Removed — and each one carries the tag itself as a property called tag. So "when somebody is tagged VIP" starts on Tag Added with one rule under Only when the event… — tag is VIP.

That is how a tag you already keep by hand becomes a starting point. Tag your wholesale customers and they get the wholesale welcome. Tag somebody who left a review and they get the thank-you. An app of yours that tags people in your store starts your automation the same way, without either of you wiring anything up.

Three things are worth knowing before you build one.

Only a tag added in your store starts anything. These events come from your store telling us a tag changed. A tag that arrives any other way — a reconciliation we run to catch a store's tags up, or the day you first connect — starts nothing, deliberately: catching up on twenty thousand people's tags would otherwise send twenty thousand emails about things that happened years ago.

Nothing starts unless something actually changed — once we know what somebody already had. Re-saving a customer record can tell us VIP was added to somebody who has had VIP for a year. We compare it with what we already hold, and a tag that was already there is not news, so nobody enters twice because a team member opened their record. For anybody whose tags we have not seen before, we have nothing to compare with — the first time your store tells us a tag was added to one of them, that counts as news even if they have carried it for years. Before you point an automation at Tag Added, ask us to catch your store's tags up; after that, a re-save starts nothing.

A tag being taken away needs us to know what somebody already had. Adding is different: your store tells us the tag it was just asked to add, so Tag Added starts an automation whether or not we have heard about that person before. Tag Removed cannot work that way — a tag removed from somebody whose tags we have never seen looks exactly like nothing happening, so we record what your store told us and start nothing that first time. Every change after it is news as usual. This only affects people who were already in your store before you connected it; for anyone added since, we know from the start. If you want removals live for everybody, ask us to catch your store's tags up first.

The tag is matched exactly as your store spells it. VIP and vip are two different tags to this rule, because that is how your store keeps them. Copy the tag out of Shopify rather than typing it from memory.

Where the event comes from is set for you. Under the event, one line says where this automation listens for it — From your store, From Shopify Flow, From an integration, From your online store or From your forms, or several of them, like From an integration and your online store — with the same marks the picker shows. There is nothing to switch. When you pick the event, the automation listens only where that event has actually come from in your store. If any of those places is your store itself or Shopify Flow, it listens there alone, so an event sent from outside your store can't start the automation. If the event has only ever come from an integration, your online store or your forms, it listens on each of those it has used, so no real event is missed. An event your store has never recorded listens where that event normally comes from. If your store's events haven't loaded yet, nothing is set — the card says Checking where this event comes from — try again in a moment. — because guessing could listen in the wrong place. An automation saved before this worked out where each event comes from may also listen to your online store for an event that has only ever come from your store itself. When you open it, the editor takes your online store off — an ordinary change you can undo, saved like any other and applied when you apply your changes. That is the only place it ever removes, and only when your store has recorded the event somewhere else; it never adds a place, never changes any other one, and does nothing to an automation that has been enabled, where what starts it is fixed. Pick its event again to update where it listens at any other time.

Once an automation has been enabled, the kind of start it has is fixed. Everything else about it can still change, and so can the places and forms ticked on a Welcome or a form start (above). An event or a list start cannot change at all, and says:

This automation has been enabled, so what starts it is fixed. Make a copy to change what starts this automation.

Automation filter is the rule for the automation as a whole. + Add a rule sits beside its title. With no rule, the card says so rather than showing you an empty builder:

Everyone can enter.

With rules, it says Only people who match: above them. Its note says when the rule is looked at:

Checked when someone enters and before every step. Anyone who stops matching leaves.

Only when the event… narrows the event itself — + Add a rule sits beside its title. With nothing narrowing it, the card reads Every Placed Order event; with rows, its note says:

All of these must be true of the same event.

Being checked before every step, and not only at the start, is what makes it useful: an abandoned-checkout automation keeps somebody in it only while they have not bought, so the person who buys after the first email is never sent the second. Its rows can count in hours as well as days ("placed an order in the last 2 hours") — a segment's rows count in days only, because a segment is not standing next to a clock the way an automation is.

Can a profile enter again? is the last setting on the card, because it is the last thing there is to decide: what happens the second time somebody does the thing. Choose one answer:

• Yes, every time the event happens — for a list start it reads Yes, every time they join the list, for a form Yes, every time they submit the form, and for a sign-up Yes, every time they sign up.
• Yes, but not too often — choosing it puts a line under it, At most once every 30 days, where you set the number of days.
• No, only once ever.