Why Manually Enroll?
Most automations in the Chariot Automation Engine fire off a triggering event — sending an estimate, a lead going stale, a move date approaching, etc. But sometimes you want to kick off a sequence of actions where there isn't a natural trigger event. You just want to decide, in the moment, that now is the time to start it.
A common use case is communication drips. For example, you've tried to get in touch with a customer several times as a salesperson and haven't been able to reach them. You want to send a respectful drip of emails and texts over a period of time to try to get them back on the horn — but you don't want to do that manually. A blueprint like Needs Info / Ghosted - Send Follow-Up handles this: set the enrollment trigger to Manually Enrolled, define your sequence of emails and texts, and then start it on a job whenever you decide the time is right.
Setting Up an Automation for Manual Enrollment
When building (or editing) the automation:
Set the Enrollment Trigger to Manually Enrolled. Nothing in Chariot will automatically enroll jobs in this automation — it only runs when you start it.
Define your steps as you normally would (send email, send SMS, create task, etc.), including any delays between them.
Save and publish the automation so it's available to enroll records into.
How to Manually Enroll a Lead or Job
Open the lead or job record in Chariot.
Go to the Automations tab on the record.
Click Add Automation. You'll see a list of any automations you've built with Manually Enrolled as the enrollment trigger.
Select the automation you want to enroll the record in.
Confirm — the record is immediately enrolled, and assuming the conditions are met, the automation will begin firing its steps based on the current time.
For a drip sequence, you'll typically see the first action (e.g., the first email and text) fire within about a minute, with the remaining steps scheduled out for the future. You can verify this two ways:
Action History — shows that the first action fired, and what's still pending.
Messages — shows the actual email and SMS that went out to the customer.
Note: Timing on manually enrolled records starts from the moment of enrollment. For example, if an automation has an action set to fire "2 hours after enrollment," it will fire 2 hours from when you manually enrolled the record — not from any past event on the record.
A Note on Conditions
If the automation has conditions configured (e.g., "only residential moves" or "only if deposit is unpaid"), those conditions will still be evaluated when each action is about to fire. Manually enrolling a record doesn't bypass the automation's logic — it simply triggers the enrollment.
If you're not sure whether a record meets the automation's conditions, review the automation's configuration before enrolling.