What are Automated-Actions?
Automated-actions allow you to create and manage actions that run automatically when an event is triggered from sheepCRM.
Without them you won't be able to do things like, automatically send email communication to your contacts, raise draft invoices in Xero, send SMS messages and so on.
Examples of how they work would be, when a new membership is added to a contact record, or when you sell a ticket through sheepEvents. Those lifecycle events trigger in the system and if you have created an automated action against it such as send a confirmation email to the user or send a draft invoice to Xero, it will perform the action automatically every time that event is triggered.
Terminology
Lifecycle event - the something that has happened
Action - a task that should occur in response to an event
Trigger - the connection between the event and the action
Please allow up to 24 hours on completion of a new instruction to be triggered to send an automated email.
Events old than 36 hours will not trigger an event. This allows you to enter older data without fear of triggering actions. e.g. backfilling payments without sending receipts.
For example if you add a payment record on the 1st of June, but the date of payment was 10th of May it will NOT send the payment received email as it is outside of the 36 hr window.
Events dates use the date of the thing that are referring to e.g. for payments it is the payment date, tickets use the creation date of the record (usually representing the purchase date)
How do I create an Automated-Action?
1. Go to Settings > Communications & Flow > Automated-actions
2. Click 'Add Automated Action' button on the right. This will bring up the side panel.
3. Set the name of your action. It's useful to name it the same as the trigger you are setting it up against for quick identification.
4. Select the trigger you want from the dropdown. For our example we will select 'new membership'.
💡 For a comprehensive list of the most common triggers available and what they do see this article > Communications: Lifecycle Email Triggers Explained
Please see API - Data Events for more information.
5. Select the action you want to perform when that trigger is fired in the system.
The most common ones are:
Send templated email
Draft templated email
Creates a draft email on a contact record but does not send it, useful for testing and before going live
Send email to fixed address
Useful for creating email notifications
Raise draft zero invoice
Send templated in App message
Sends a message via the sheepApp delivery channel instead of email.
💡 Depending on the action you select it may give you additional fields to fill out. Selecting 'Send email to fixed address' will give you an email field likewise selecting 'Send json webhook' will give you a webhook URL field to fill out.
For our example we will select 'Send templated email'.
See here for more information on API Actions.
6. Select the template for your action.
For our example we are creating a 'new membership' automated action which is going to send a templated email to the contact once they have signed up, the template will contain information about their new membership and any other information we want to provide them with. In this example we have already got our template set up, again it can be useful to name the template and action similar to each other to keep the relation between them easy to understand.
⚠️ An automated action will generate the email and send it (if that is what you have set) for templates that are not active.
💡 Any action with template in its name as well as 'Send email to a fixed address' will require a template to be associated with it. You can learn more about setting up templates here - Settings: Templates
7. The comment field is an optional field for you to add some context for yourself or others to read when you come back, it is read only and for internal use only. It has no effect on the action itself.
8. Finally we need to make sure that the action is set to active otherwise it will not do anything. So toggle the active field in the top right and hit save.
🎉 That's it! In this example you have learnt how to add and set up an automated action which will send a new membership email to everyone that sign's up via the sheepApp or when a membership is added to a contact record in the CRM.
There are lots of variations and types of automated actions you could set up for your organisation the aim is to take away the ad-hoc and administration burden allowing you to focus on what really matters.
🚫 Disable an action
You can disable an action at anytime without deleting it by simply turning the active toggle to off.
🗑️ Delete an action
If you want to completely remove an action open the action side panel for the one you want to remove and press 'Delete' in the bottom right. This will stop the action also delete it.
📖 Further reading - Templates
Most automated-actions require a template to work. If you haven't created any templates yet please refer to our article below for creating them.