CRM Automations

Automations are if-this-then-that rules that run on autopilot inside your CRM. Instead of you watching the contacts list all day, a rule waits for a trigger — like a new lead arriving or a lead turning hot — and then does the work for you: creates a follow-up task, tags the contact, moves the deal, or pings you. The page header says it plainly: "Put your follow-up on autopilot. Turn on a recipe below — it runs the moment the trigger happens."

This is for any owner who hates dropping the ball on a lead. Real example: someone fills out your contact form at 11pm. With the Welcome new leads recipe on, a task "Follow up with Sara" is waiting in your Tasks list, due tomorrow, and she's already tagged New lead — before you've even seen the notification. You do the thinking once when you set the rule; the CRM does the remembering forever after.

Two promises keep this safe. First, automations only act on new activity going forward — turning on a rule never retro-fires on your existing contacts, so you won't get hit with a hundred tasks the second you enable it. Second, they never create duplicates: each rule is idempotent, so the same lead can't spawn the same task twice. You'll see this exact reassurance printed at the bottom of the Automations page.

Every automation begins with exactly one trigger — the event that wakes the rule up. There are four, each shown in the Trigger dropdown in plain language. Pick the one that matches the moment you want to react to. The trigger is the only mandatory choice; the conditions and actions are how you refine and respond.

When a new lead arrives (new_lead) — fires the instant an identifying event creates or matches a contact: a contact-form submission, a booked appointment, a service booking, a newsletter signup, or an order. This is your fastest reflex; it's the moment a stranger becomes a named lead. The trigger carries the activity type, so you can narrow it with an activity_type condition if you only want, say, form submissions.

When the lead score crosses the threshold (score_crossed) — fires the single time a contact's lead score climbs from below 50 up to 50 or more (50 is the HOT line). It fires on the crossing, not on every point gained, so you get one clean alert when a warm lead turns hot — not a stream of them. Pair it with a Score threshold field (below) to set your own number if 50 isn't right for you.

When a deal changes stage (stage_changed) — fires whenever you drag a deal to a new column in the Pipeline (or a change_stage action moves it). The trigger carries the destination stage's key, so you almost always pair it with a stage_in condition to react only to a specific stage — for example ["won"] to thank a customer, or ["qualified"] to prep a proposal. Without that condition, it would fire on *every* stage move.

When a lead goes quiet (going_cold) — fires for leads that were active but have gone silent. Once a day at 08:00 a background sweep scans your leads that are still in the lead stage, still have a score above 0, and whose last activity is older than 7 days, then fires this trigger for each. It only runs for accounts that actually have an active going-cold rule, and because the actions are one-task-per-rule-per-contact, the daily sweep never spams — a cold lead gets one re-engagement task, not a new one every morning.

When a trigger fires and any conditions pass, the rule runs its actions — one or more, in order. There are four building blocks. A single rule can chain several (the templates do exactly this: create a task *and* add a tag). You'll see each action as a small colored chip under the rule's name on the Automations page.

Create task (create_task) — drops a to-do into your Tasks list, attached to the contact. The title supports {{name}} (or {{contact}}), which is swapped for the lead's name — so "Follow up with {{name}}" becomes "Follow up with Sara". An optional due_days sets the deadline: 1 means due tomorrow, 2 due in two days, and 0 means due today. This is the workhorse action — most recipes use it.

Add tag (add_tag) — attaches a label like "New lead", "Cold", or "Customer" to the contact. If the tag doesn't exist yet it's created; if the contact already has it, nothing is duplicated. Tags are how you later filter and segment your contacts, so this action quietly builds clean lists for you over time — every hot lead auto-tagged, every won customer grouped, with zero manual work.

Change stage (change_stage) — moves the contact's open deal to a stage you name by its key. It only acts on an existing *open* lead; if the contact has no open deal, nothing happens (it won't invent a deal). Moving to a stage marked won or lost closes the deal accordingly. Use this to auto-advance deals — for instance, push a lead to "Contacted" the moment your follow-up task is created.

Notify owner (notify_owner) — the alert action. It creates one urgent open task (prefixed with a 🔔 bell) *and* sends a best-effort email to your account address with the lead's name, email/phone, and current score out of 100. It's protected against spam: only one open alert per rule per contact exists at a time, so a flapping score won't bombard you. This is what the Hot-lead alert recipe uses to get your attention the instant a lead turns hot.

Under Recommended automations you'll find five ready-made recipes, each in its own card with an icon, a name, and a one-line description of what it does. You don't have to design anything — just press Enable and the rule is live. Once on, the card shows a green Enabled check instead of the button. These are the fastest way to get value on day one.

Welcome new leads — trigger: new lead arrives. It creates a follow-up task due tomorrow ("Follow up with {{name}}") and tags the contact New lead. This is the one almost everyone should turn on first: it guarantees no inbound lead ever sits unanswered, and it builds you a tidy "New lead" list automatically.

Hot-lead alert — trigger: score crosses 50. It runs Notify owner, so the moment a lead's score reaches the hot line you get an email plus a 🔔 urgent task to reach out now. Turn this on if you sell anything where speed-to-lead matters; it makes sure your hottest prospects never cool off waiting.

Re-engage cold leads — trigger: lead goes quiet (7+ days). It creates a re-engagement task due today ("Re-engage {{name}} — going cold") and tags the contact Cold. This is your safety net against leads slipping through the cracks; combined with the daily 08:00 sweep, it quietly resurfaces anyone you've lost touch with.

Thank won customers — trigger: deal changes stage to *won*. It creates a thank-you / onboarding task due tomorrow and tags the contact Customer. Qualified → prepare proposal — trigger: deal moves to *qualified* — creates a task to prepare and send a proposal, due in two days. Both are stage-driven, so they fire from your Pipeline drags and keep your sales motion moving without you remembering each next step.

Enabling a recipe simply inserts it as a normal rule into Your automations below, with throttle set to 0 (no delay). It's guarded against duplicates by name, so pressing Enable twice — or enabling the same recipe on two visits — won't create two copies. Once it's in your list you can Edit, Pause, or Remove it like any rule.

Every live rule appears under Your automations as a card. It shows the rule name, a status pill — Active (green) or Paused (grey) — a one-line description of the trigger, the action chips, and, once it's done some work, a small "N task(s) created so far" counter. Three buttons sit on the right: Edit, Pause/Activate, and Remove.

Pause vs Remove. Click Pause to temporarily switch a rule off — it stays in your list (now showing the Paused pill and an Activate button) and stops firing until you turn it back on. Use this when you want a break, not a goodbye. Remove deletes the rule for good after a confirmation prompt; the tasks it already created stay put — only the rule itself goes.

Click Edit to open the Edit automation modal, where you can fine-tune the rule field by field. This is also how you go beyond the five recipes — change a recipe's wording, swap its trigger, add conditions, or build something entirely custom. The modal has six controls; we'll walk each one next.

Name — the label you'll recognize the rule by in your list (max 191 characters, required). Trigger — the dropdown with the four options from earlier; changing it changes what wakes the rule up. If you pick score crosses the threshold, a Score threshold (0–100) field appears: type your number (default 50) and it's saved as a score_gte condition behind the scenes. Leave it at 50 unless you have a reason — 50 is the system's HOT line.

Throttle (seconds between fires for the same lead) — a cool-down so one contact can't set the rule off over and over in a short burst. If a rule fired for a lead less than this many seconds ago, it's skipped for that lead. The recipes ship with 0 (no throttle). Set, say, 86400 (one day) if you only want a rule to act once per day per person. Note the clock only resets when an action actually fires.

Conditions (JSON) — optional filters, all of which must pass (AND-combined). Each is an object { "field": "...", "value": ... }. Three fields are allowed: activity_type (a list, e.g. ["contact_form"]), stage_in (a list, e.g. ["won"]), and score_gte (a number). Lists go to activity_type and stage_in; a plain number goes to score_gte. Any unknown field is rejected on save, so stick to those three. Leave it as [] for "no conditions — always run".

Actions (JSON) — what the rule does; at least one is required. Each is an object keyed by type: { "type": "create_task", "title": "Call lead", "due_days": 1 }, { "type": "add_tag", "tag": "hot" }, { "type": "change_stage", "stage": "contacted" }, or { "type": "notify_owner" }. A create_task must have a non-empty title; add_tag needs a tag; change_stage needs a stage key. Save validates everything and shows a clear red message ("Task action needs a title", "Unknown action type") if anything's off — fix it and save again.

Press Save changes to apply. The form checks your JSON is valid first (it tells you if the conditions or actions aren't a proper array), then saves and reloads the page so you see the updated card. If you change your mind, Cancel closes the modal without touching the rule. There's a light rate limit on saves, so very rapid repeated saves are throttled — just save once and wait for the reload.

Start with the recipes, then customize. The fastest path is to enable Welcome new leads and Hot-lead alert on day one — they cover the two moments that matter most (a new lead arriving, and one turning hot). Live with them for a week, then open Edit to tweak the task wording or add a condition once you know your own flow.

Use conditions to keep rules sharp. A broad trigger plus a tight condition beats many overlapping rules. For example, one stage_changed rule with stage_in: ["won"] is cleaner than a rule that fires on every move. Remember conditions are AND-combined — every one must pass — so don't stack conditions that can't be true at once.

Reach for throttle only when a rule could over-fire. Most rules are naturally one-shot (a new lead arrives once; a score crosses 50 once). Throttle earns its keep on noisier setups — for instance a custom rule on a frequently-updated score where you only want one nudge per day. Set it in seconds: 3600 = 1 hour, 86400 = 1 day.

Let tags do your segmenting. Every add_tag action is quietly building a list you can filter on later in Contacts. Lean into it — auto-tag "Customer" on won, "Cold" on quiet, "New lead" on arrival — and within weeks you'll have clean segments you never had to maintain by hand.

Trust the no-duplicate, no-retro guarantees. You can enable, pause, and re-enable rules freely without fear of double tasks or a flood on existing contacts. Task creation is keyed so the same lead can't get the same task twice, and notify_owner keeps only one open alert per contact. Experiment — the system is built so you can't make a mess.

Check the "tasks created so far" counter to see what's working. Each rule card shows how many tasks it has produced. A rule sitting at zero after a busy week is a hint its trigger or conditions are too narrow (or it's paused); a rule racing ahead might be too broad and deserve a condition. Treat the counter as a quiet performance dashboard.

Will enabling a rule create tasks for my existing contacts? No. Automations only act on new activity going forward — they never retro-fire on contacts you already have. Turning on Welcome new leads today won't generate a task for last month's leads; it starts working from the next lead that arrives.

Can the same lead trigger the same task twice? No. Task creation is idempotent — keyed by rule + the originating activity (or one-open-task-per-rule-per-contact for triggers without a specific activity, like going-cold). Even if an event is processed more than once, you get one task, not duplicates.

Why didn't my Hot-lead alert fire even though the lead is above 50? The score_crossed trigger fires only on the *crossing* — the one moment the score moves from below 50 to 50 or more. If the lead was already above 50 when you enabled the rule, there's no fresh crossing to react to. It'll fire next time a different lead crosses the line.

When exactly does the "going quiet" rule run? A background sweep runs once a day at 08:00. It looks at leads still in the lead stage, with a score above 0, whose last activity is older than 7 days, and fires the going-cold trigger for each. Because actions are one-per-contact, a cold lead gets a single re-engagement task — not a new one every morning.

Does notify_owner really email me? Yes — it sends a best-effort email to your account address with the lead's name, contact details, and score, alongside the 🔔 in-app task. "Best-effort" means the task is always created even if the email can't be sent for some reason, so you never lose the alert. Make sure your account email is current so the email half lands.

Do automations apply to all my cards or just one? All of them. Automation rules are account-wide — they don't have a per-card setting, so they run across every vCard and store on your account. The scope selector on the Automations page is there for navigation consistency with the rest of the CRM; it doesn't filter which cards a rule covers.

What's the difference between Pause and Remove? Pause flips a rule off but keeps it in your list so you can re-activate it later with one click — nothing is lost. Remove deletes the rule entirely after a confirmation. In both cases, any tasks the rule already created stay in your Tasks list; only the rule's future behavior changes.

Can I build a rule from scratch instead of using a recipe? Yes. Enable any recipe to get a starting rule in your list, then click Edit and rewrite the Name, Trigger, Conditions, and Actions JSON to whatever you need — for example a new_lead rule that only fires on appointments and moves the deal to a "Booked" stage. The save step validates your JSON and flags any mistake before it goes live.