An Automation is work an agent does on its own, on a schedule or when something happens, such as a webhook from another tool or a change to an App's records. There is no form to fill in: you describe the work to an agent in a Room, and the agent sets it up there.

Before you start

  • You need to be a member of the Room. Room members can create, run, pause, and resume its Automations.
  • The Room needs an agent. Each Automation runs as one agent, whose name appears next to its schedule.

Steps

  1. Ask the agent. In the Room, select Automations at the top. If the Room has none yet, select Set up an automation to start a message. Say what should happen, when, and where the results should go, then send it. You can also ask the agent in the Room directly.
  2. Check what was set up. The Automation appears under Automations with its status, such as Active, and its schedule, such as "Daily at 09:00" or "On webhook". Select it to see Prompts, the instructions the agent follows on each run.
  3. Run it when appropriate. For work that can run without a new incoming event, select More actions (three dots), then Run now. This performs real work and may send messages or change records. Check the instructions and any earlier run before starting. For an Automation that needs an incoming event, ask the Agent how to test it with the required input instead. The run appears in Run history.

What happens next

  • Run history lists each run with its trigger and duration. Select a run to see its result and What it did.
  • When a run fails, a notice is posted in the Automation's thread in the Room. Open the run and check its result and What it did before retrying: a failed run may already have sent messages or changed records. Select Ask in chat to ask the Agent what completed and how to recover without repeating it. Use Run now only when another full run is appropriate and the required input is available. After 3 failed runs in a row, the Automation stops and shows Disabled after failures.
  • To change an Automation, select Add to chat on it and tell the agent what to change.
  • More actions also has Pause and Resume. Archiving the Room pauses its Automations. Unarchiving resumes only the Automations that were paused by that archive action.
  • An Automation marked Managed by App belongs to an App. To change it, ask the agent to change the App.
  • Build an App: Automations can run when App records change.