Excluded messages

You will usually see these in the Activity View for an employee enrolled in an automation. The message appears crossed out.

Messages may sometimes appear as Excluded in the Activity view. Sometimes this is expected, and other times it reflects problems in underlying message configuration or HRIS data and indicates that a message cannot be sent. Messages automatically transition back to Scheduled or Paused if the conditions change and allow it to be sent before its scheduled date. However, sometimes these might still require manual intervention.

If a message is marked “excluded”, it means that either it hasn’t been sent or will not be sent as scheduled. Pyn now gives you some additional information about the message.

When an employee becomes eligible to be enrolled in an automation — for example because the HRIS data reflects that they became a manager for the first time — Pyn will enroll the employee and create all the associated messages as defined by the automation. You can find all of these messages by navigating to Activity and clicking on a particular employee enrollment.

These messages will start in Scheduled mode or Paused mode depending on the automation verification mode. However, not all of the messages will necessarily be sent. Some of the messages may not apply or cannot be sent due to some underlying conditions.

There are a number of reasons that a message may not be sent. Some of these might be expected, and some of them might reflect a problem with the underlying data or message configuration.

If the message contains a filter — for example only Employees in US should receive this message — the message will be marked as Excluded if the target recipient (employee or manager) does not match the filter. Often times these are deliberately set up to send different messages to different people depending on various factors such as their location or department. It is then expected that the message will be Excluded if it does not apply.

However, there might be cases where you expect the message should be sent to the employee, but the filter is still marking the message as Excluded. In this case, it might be that the filter is incorrect or the underlying data in your HRIS is incorrect. For example, if the employee is based in the US and the US-filtered message is still Excluded, it might be that the location is missing or incorrect for that employee in your HRIS data.

Sometimes you will have a message configured to be sent to the employee’s manager. It might be the case that the employee doesn’t have a manager assigned. In this case the message will be marked as Excluded.

Your HRIS data for the employee might be missing a work or personal email. If Pyn can’t determine a valid email address for the employee, the message will be marked as Excluded.

In general, there might be other problems with the HRIS data for the employee that may cause the message to be Excluded.

Messages can be marked as Excluded by Pyn in one of two places:

When an employee is first enrolled in an automation, Pyn will check if all the messages can be sent. If it finds any messages that cannot be sent for the reasons above, the message will be immediately marked as Excluded.

Pyn also checks all the scheduled messages on a regular basis (every 5-10 minutes). If at any point Pyn determines that a message cannot be sent as configured, it will be marked as Excluded. This does not apply to Paused messages or drafts. Those will remain in their original state.

If a message is marked as Excluded, Pyn will keep checking the message on a regular basis (every 5-10 minutes). If the underlying reason the message was Excluded no longer applies, the message will transition to Scheduled or Paused automatically, depending on the automation verification mode.

If the Excluded message is past its scheduled date, it becomes Excluded forever, and it will not be re-tried.

You can edit an upcoming Excluded message as any other upcoming message. However, if the Excluded message is past its scheduled date, it becomes read only in the same way as a sent message.

If you encounter an Excluded message, you should first check if this is expected. A filter might be correctly filtering the recipient out as they are not meant to receive that message.

If it is unexpected, you should check the reasons mentioned above.

Sometimes your HRIS data might be updated in some expected stages, and there is no intervention required. For example, an employee might be added but not yet contain an email address or manager. They will be enrolled in the onboarding automation but all the messages will show up as Excluded. Later, the email address and manager is updated in the HRIS. Pyn will automatically transition those messages to Scheduled or Paused, depending on the automation mode.

In all cases where you need to fix underlying data, or filters, please note that a message may not transition from Excluded status immediately. This is because Pyn only checks the message every 5-10 minutes. Don’t worry, though, Pyn continues to check the message until its scheduled date, so even if it is still showing up as Excluded, but you can see that the underlying data has been fixed and is reflected in Pyn, the message will still send successfully.

If you need to fix underlying data, such as updating the employee manager, or the recipient email address, or other data, note that two steps will need to happen before a message will transition from Excluded state.

Therefore, if you update underlying data in your HRIS, it might take 25 minutes for the message to transition back to a Scheduled state.

If the filter is incorrect, you can do one of two things:

If you’re not able to fix the message or data immediately, you can pause the message or convert it to draft by removing the schedule, or update the schedule to have it be sent later. If the underlying conditions for the message being Excluded are fixed before its scheduled date, it will transition to Scheduled and be sent normally.

If the message is Paused after being Excluded, it will remain paused even if the scheduled date passes, and if you unpause the message later and it is no longer Excluded, it will be sent.

If you manually pause and re-schedule the message, you will see that the message will be marked as Scheduled. However, if the underlying conditions still prevent this message from being sent, it will transition back to Excluded in the next 5 or 10 minutes.

In general, a message that cannot be sent will not be sent, so the underlying conditions still need to be resolved.