How do I send an automatic text, email or task when something happens?

An automation is one trigger paired with one action: something happens, and your organization does something in reply, without a person having to remember to do it. Automation rules are on Pro and up.

Build a rule

1. Open TMS, then Setup, then the Automations tab.
2. Click New automation, or start from a ready-made recipe like Welcome message or Birthday greeting and edit it from there.
3. Pick a trigger: a contact entering a specific pipeline stage, a new signup, a birthday, a signup anniversary, a contact going idle for a set number of days, a task approaching or past its due date, a task being finished, the AI not managing to finish a task, an outstanding document or payment request, a job being marked done, an appointment being booked, coming up or missed, or the stage-reminder ladder covered in How do I get reminded automatically when a customer is stuck on a step? The three appointment triggers are covered in How do I remind customers about their appointment? Most triggers also offer Delay after trigger: the number of hours to wait before the action runs, including Birthday, Signup anniversary and Dormancy. The reminder triggers set their own timing, so they do not show it: a task due soon, overdue or on its reminder schedule, an outstanding document or payment request, an appointment coming up, and the stage-reminder ladder. Your list of rules shows the wait under the trigger, for example "After 48h".
4. Pick an action: send an SMS, send an email, send a WhatsApp message, create a task, send a payment request, ask for a review, complete a task on its own, or notify a staff member. Asking for a review needs your public review page link saved first. Sending a payment request needs a pay link or bank details saved under TMS, Setup, Payment instructions first. Every plan already has a simpler built-in switch for this, a rule here is for when you want a text message, a delay, or a different trigger instead, see How do I ask customers for a review automatically?
5. Fill in the message or task details for the action you picked, using placeholders like the contact's first name where offered. Reminder messages, for a task due soon, overdue or on its reminder schedule, or an outstanding document or payment request, must include their link (the progress, upload or payment link), or the rule will not save.
6. Save. The rule starts running the next time its trigger happens.

When daily reminders reach your customers

The once-a-day messages, for a task due soon, overdue or on its reminder schedule, an outstanding document or payment request, a birthday, a signup anniversary or a contact going idle, reach your customers between 9 am and 9 pm in your business's timezone, the one set under Settings, General. One that comes due overnight waits until 9 am. A Delay after trigger is counted first, and if it ends outside 9 am to 9 pm the message waits for the next 9 am. If the task is finished, or the document or payment request is completed, before the message goes out, it is not sent. Creating a task and notifying a staff member happen straight away, whatever the hour.

A text a rule sends is an ordinary text from your business. It shows up in that customer's text conversation in your Inbox, next to everything else you have said to them. It is paid for from your credit like any other text. And it ends with your business name and a way to reach you, the same line every automatic text carries, which can make a long message count as one extra text.

Step emails you switch on in the journey editor show here named Step email and the step's name. Edit, switch off or delete any of them like a rule of your own; see How do I set up my customer journey?

When a task is finished

Pick "Task finished" as the trigger to do something the moment one of a customer's tasks is done.

1. Under Finished by, choose who has to finish it: anyone, a team member, the AI, another automation, a paid payment request, all its documents arriving, or the customer signing it. For example, pick The AI to tell a customer their quote is ready as soon as the AI finishes it.
2. Under Which task, leave Any task, or pick one kind of task, like a final walkthrough. With Any task, a message rule reaches the customer every time a step they can see is finished, so pick a task when the message is about one step.
3. Pick the action. A text or an email can include the name of the task that was finished and a private link to a page showing the customer their own progress.

Only tasks for a customer count: a task with no customer never starts this rule. A text, email, WhatsApp message, review request or payment request only goes out for a step you chose to show the customer, by switching on "Customer sees this" on its job in Edit journey. A step your team does behind the scenes never messages the customer, though a "Create a task" or "Notify a staff member" rule still runs for it, since neither one reaches the customer either way. Each rule runs once for each finished task, never twice for the same one. A rule on this trigger can't use "Complete a task on its own", because one finished task finishing the next could go on without end.

When the AI can't finish a task

Pick "AI couldn't finish a task" as the trigger to do something when the AI gives up on a step. The AI tries a step up to three times. After the third try without work it can use, it hands the step to your team, and that handoff is what starts the rule.

The usual pairing is "Create a task" or "Notify a staff member", so somebody is told to pick the step up. There is nothing else to set on this trigger. Each rule runs once for each task the AI hands over, never twice for the same one. As with "Task finished", a message to the customer only goes out for a step you chose to show them, while "Create a task" and "Notify a staff member" both run for any step, since neither one reaches the customer. A rule on this trigger can't use "Complete a task on its own": that would mark the step done with nobody having done it.

Completing a task on its own

"Complete a task on its own" finishes a task the same way a person completing it would: the step's next task unlocks, and it's recorded in your activity log so it's never an anonymous change. Pair it with "A task is approaching its due date", "A task has gone overdue" or the reminder-cadence trigger, since those are the only triggers that already know which task to act on. Paired with any other trigger, like a contact entering a stage, the rule has no task to point at and does nothing. It can't be paired with "Task finished" or "AI couldn't finish a task" at all. You can add an optional note; leave it blank and a plain default note is used instead. This is a separate, rule-based way to auto-finish a task from the per-job "AI does this step on its own" choice covered in How do I set up my customer journey?. That one runs from the job's own AI setting, this one runs from a trigger you pick.

Notifying a staff member

"Notify a staff member" puts a note in someone's bell, the notification icon in the top bar, instead of messaging your customer. Use it for things your team needs to know about, like "the AI finished a draft, please check it" or "a customer is ready for their final call." It works with almost every trigger, not only the task ones. The two exceptions are an outstanding payment request and the stage-reminder ladder: both only ever send your customer an email, so "Send email" is the only action they offer.

1. Choose who to notify: a specific person, or whoever is currently working with that customer. With the second choice, the person working with the customer gets it first, and the person you pick gets it only when nobody is.
2. Write a short message, up to 240 characters. You can use the customer's first name and the task's title as placeholders. If there's no first name on file, the note says "the customer" instead.
3. Save. The person sees it the next time they open the bell. Clicking the note opens that customer's record, so the message doesn't need a link.

This never reaches your customer, no matter the trigger, and it is not paid for like a text or email. If nobody the rule could notify is still on your team by the time it fires, nothing is sent. The Automations tab then counts it on its own line, under the blocked messages summary, as a staff alert that reached nobody, so you know to edit the rule and pick someone else. Unlike a text or email, it runs for every step on the task triggers ("Task finished", "AI couldn't finish a task", a task approaching its due date, gone overdue, or on a reminder cadence), not only the ones you show the customer under Pipelines, because it never reaches the customer either way. It also runs on every trigger whether or not the customer has opted out of your messages, since opting out only ever covers messages sent to them, never a note left for your own team.

You can pair it with a message to the customer on the same trigger: build two rules, one for each. On the task due-date, overdue and reminder-cadence triggers, a task gets at most one customer message a day, and each staff note rule goes out at most once a day beside it, so the note and the customer's reminder both go out, while two rules that message the customer still send them only one. "Appointment coming up" and an outstanding document request allow one active customer rule each, but a staff note never counts toward that limit, so it sits beside the customer's reminder and each goes out once.

Have your automations drafted for you

Click "Draft my automations" and we'll suggest a handful of follow ups your business should probably have, written in your own words. We use what you've told us about your business, what you've written in your knowledge base, and your real pipeline stage names, so a rule that watches a stage always names a stage you actually have.

1. Nothing is saved yet. Each suggestion shows its trigger, its action and one line saying why it's worth having.
2. Edit the wording. For a text or an email you can change the message and the subject; for a task you can change the title and the instructions.
3. Click "Add it, switched off" on the ones you want, or "Not this one" to drop it.
4. Every rule you add arrives switched OFF. Nothing it says can reach a customer until you read it in the list and turn it on with the switch. That is the whole point: you approve the wording first.

We only ever draft the kinds of rule we can fill in safely, so WhatsApp messages, payment requests, review requests and staff notifications are not suggested (the last one needs a real person from your team, which we don't guess at). Those you build yourself.

If you haven't told us what your business does yet, we'll say so and point you at your AI settings rather than writing generic messages. And if your plan doesn't include adding new automation rules, the button tells you the same thing the New automation button does, without drafting anything.

Suggestions right after you install a journey

There's a second place suggestions appear: right after you install a customer journey, a card called "Suggested automations" shows up on that screen, see How do I set up my customer journey? It works the same way as "Draft my automations" above, except it's grounded in the stages AND the jobs you just installed, so it can suggest things this button can't, like "Task finished" rules naming one of your real jobs, or turning on "finish this job automatically once every document is in" for a job that asks for documents. Every suggestion starts unticked; tick the ones you want and click "Turn on selected" to switch them on right away, rather than arriving switched off. Suggestions you already have as a rule, in any wording, are left off the list.

Add one from a journey step

You can also start a message rule from the step it belongs to. In the customer journey editor, open a published step and choose Add, then Send a message. The rule is saved to "Stage entered" on that step. These rules are listed on the step and on this tab.

Turn a rule on or off

Use the switch on the rule's row to pause or resume it without deleting it. A paused rule keeps its setup so you can turn it back on later exactly as it was.

Sending a WhatsApp message

A WhatsApp action needs an approved message template, the same kind covered in the inbox's saved-replies article. Pick one from the list and fill in every variable it needs; a rule can't be saved with a template left incomplete.

If a new rule can't be created

Whether you can add a brand new automation rule depends on your plan. If yours doesn't include it, you can still see, edit and turn on or off any rules you already have, only the option to add a new one is switched off.

Why a message didn't go out

If sends for this rule seem to be missing, the Automations tab shows a plain summary of why recent ones were blocked, split by email and text. For an email that might be the contact having unsubscribed, their address having bounced before, your organization's email sending being paused, or a daily or monthly sending limit. For a text it might be the contact having replied STOP, never having given permission to text them, the send landing outside daytime hours where they live, your account not having enough credit to pay for it, or your business name not being set yet. A text is never sent with the name we filled in when you signed up, so set your real one, see How do I update my business name, logo, contact details or address? This is shown so you can see the reason rather than just noticing a message never arrived.

When we can't confirm a message went out

Once in a while the texting network or the email service doesn't answer in time, so we can't tell whether a text or email actually reached your customer or not. That's different from a blocked send: nothing stopped it, we just never got confirmation either way. When that happens you'll see a separate count on the Automations tab, not mixed into the blocked total, and the same task shows a note asking you to check the conversation before sending anything again, so you don't end up messaging the same customer twice.

Tell the AI what to change

After you click "Draft my automations" and get a list of suggestions, a box appears: "Tell the AI what to change." Type an instruction, for example "only suggest rules that send a text" or "drop anything about reviews," and click Revise to get a new set of suggestions built from that instruction. You'll see the old suggestions next to the new ones before anything changes. Click Keep to carry the revised list forward, or Discard to go back. Nothing is added to your automations until you click "Add it, switched off" on the ones you want, exactly like a first set of suggestions.