Automations
Make Mployr do the routine work for you - when something happens, run the steps that always follow.
Overview
An automation is a rule in three parts:
Trigger - the event that starts it (an invoice went overdue, a leave request was submitted, a lead reached a stage)
Conditions - optional tests that decide whether this particular event qualifies
Actions - what Mployr does in response
Automations run on their own once activated. Every run is recorded, so you can see what fired, what it did, and what it skipped.
Creating an Automation
Navigate to Automations
Click Create Automation
- Give it a name that says what it does ("Remind customers when an invoice goes overdue")
Pick a trigger under When this happens...
Add conditions under Only if... if the rule shouldn't apply to everything
Add one or more actions under Do this...
Click Save as Draft, or Save & Activate when you're ready for it to run
Mployr blocks a rule that duplicates an existing one - the same trigger with the same conditions - so you can't accidentally send everything twice.
The builder only offers triggers and actions for the modules your business has switched on, and an action that would write into a module you've switched off is skipped.
Triggers
Triggers are grouped by the module they come from:
People - person created, person updated (optionally on a specific field), employment terminated, onboarding started or completed
Time & Attendance - timesheet submitted, approved or rejected; leave requested, approved, rejected or cancelled; clocked in or out; missed clock-out; left the work location while clocked in; shift swap requested, approved or rejected; roster published
Payroll - pay run created, approved or finalised
Accounting - invoice created, sent, paid or overdue; payment received; bill created, due soon or paid; expense created, submitted, approved, rejected or paid; insurance policy expiring
CRM - lead created, activated, stage changed, won, lost or declined; company created; contact created; activity logged; quote and order events
Recruitment - new application; application moved to a stage; candidate hired
Projects - project created or completed; task created, assigned, completed or overdue; and Task Status Changed, which fires on every status move - use a condition on the task's status to pick the column you care about
Workflows - workflow started, step completed, workflow completed
Learning, Performance, Documents, Support, Memberships, Forms, WHS and Disputes - the main lifecycle events in each
System - Scheduled Time rules that run on a schedule you set rather than reacting to an event
Triggers that need it take their own settings - "Bill Due Soon" asks how many days before the due date, "Leave Requested" can be limited to one leave type, "Application Moved to a Stage" to one stage, "Activity Logged" to one activity type.
A few things to know before you rely on a trigger:
Date-based triggers are checked once a day. Invoice Overdue and Task Overdue fire the day after the due date passes, and each fires once - a rule switched on later won't pick up records that were already overdue. Bill Due Soon and the expiring triggers fire on the day that's your chosen number of days ahead
Scheduled Time rules run at the day and time you set, in your own time zone. Under How often, choose Every day, Every weekday (Mon-Fri), Weekly (tick the days), Fortnightly, Monthly, Quarterly, Yearly or Custom (cron), then the Time. The Next Run column on the Automations list shows when each one runs next. A run Mployr couldn't make for more than a few hours is skipped rather than sent late
Onboarding Started and Onboarding Completed fire for onboarding workflows only. Workflow Started and Workflow Completed fire for every kind of workflow, offboarding included. Resuming a workflow that was on hold isn't a start
The three Approval triggers listed under Workflows don't fire yet
New Application fires when someone applies online and when someone is added by hand with Add Someone - a condition on Where They Applied From tells them apart
Conditions
Conditions decide whether a triggered event actually qualifies. Build them with:
Operators - equals, does not equal, contains, does not contain, is greater than, is less than, is empty, is not empty, is one of, is not one of. Which ones are offered depends on the field
Match ALL or ANY - once you've added a condition, choose whether the rule needs ALL of your conditions to be true or ANY one of them. Conditions sit in a single list - they can't be nested into groups
Multi-value tests - "is one of" takes a list, so one rule can cover several stages, statuses or types
Conditions can read the record that triggered the rule and its related records - a lead's stage, value, product or service and assignees; a project's owner; a task's status, priority and assignee.
Lead stages, quote statuses and order statuses come from your own lists. Task Status offers a fixed list instead - To Do, In Progress, In Review and Done. In Progress, In Review and Done match your statuses with those names; To Do, and statuses you've named yourself, can't be matched yet.
Future Lead is Yes while a lead is still waiting on its activation date. Set it to No on a "Lead Created" rule to leave future leads alone, and let a "Lead Activated" rule pick them up on the day they open.
Actions
Communicate - send an email, or send an in-app notification to a user (a notification from a task or lead rule opens that task or lead)
People - update a person's department, start their onboarding or offboarding
Workflows - start a workflow from one of your templates
Reports - email a report as Excel, CSV or PDF
Time & leave - approve or reject a timesheet, approve or reject a leave request
Payroll - create a pay run
Accounting - create an invoice, send a payment reminder
CRM - create a lead, update a lead's stage, create an activity, assign to a user, update a quote's or order's status, archive or unarchive a quote or order
Projects - assign a task, update a task's status, move a task to a group, set a board column, create a project from a template
Integrations - send the details to another system with a webhook
Wait / Delay - wait a set number of minutes, hours or days before the next action, so a rule can chase something up later rather than immediately
Actions can use values from the record that triggered them, written as placeholders like {{lead.title}} or {{owner.email}}. A placeholder Mployr doesn't recognise is left blank.
Some actions are worth knowing in detail:
Send Email sends the Subject and Body you write in the action - the Body is the same formatted editor as My Mailbox. Leave To blank to email the owner of the record that triggered the rule. From is the business's sending address (one of your connected email accounts - see the Email guide), or a mailbox you send from yourself in My Mailbox: then it goes out from that mailbox with its signature and is kept in its Sent folder. If you later lose access to that mailbox, the automation stops sending the email rather than sending it from somewhere else. With a mailbox chosen, Email Template lists that mailbox's templates - picking one copies its subject and message into the email, so later changes to the template don't change what the automation sends
Send Report emails Time Tracking, Team Productivity or one of your saved reports as Excel, CSV or PDF, for a period counted back from each send (such as last week). Send everyone the same copy, or each person their own copy holding only their rows. Pair it with Scheduled Time for a regular report, or use Schedule on the report itself - see the Reports guide
Start Onboarding, Start Offboarding and Start Workflow start the template you pick for the person behind the trigger, exactly as if you'd assigned it. They're skipped when the person already has a workflow of that type under way, or the template has no active steps - see the Workflows guide
Create Activity can assign to several people at once, set a due date either as "in N days" from the trigger or as a specific date, and links the activity to the company behind a lead or contact, not just the contact. On a project rule - a follow-up when a project is completed, say - it's linked to the project's client and lead, and names the project
Create Invoice drafts an empty invoice, due on the customer's own payment terms. Leave Customer blank and it's drafted for the company on the record that triggered the rule. Add its lines before you send it
Send Payment Reminder emails the invoice's customer a short, fixed reminder of the amount outstanding
Create Lead works on a "Contact Created" rule - the lead is created for that contact
Create Project from Template stands up a whole project - milestones, tasks and their dependencies - from one of your project templates, linked to the lead or company behind the trigger. The owner you pick (or the rule's creator) owns it. Pair it with "Lead Won" to start the delivery project the moment a sale closes
Update Task Status offers To Do, In Progress, In Review and Done, and looks for a status with that name. Only In Progress and Done line up with the standard status names - the other two are skipped, and statuses you've named yourself aren't offered
Create Pay Run opens an empty draft weekly pay run for the current week - the rest of the pay run is still done in Payroll
Approve Leave Request sets the request to approved without recording who approved it
Wait / Delay doesn't re-check the conditions when it resumes - an invoice paid during the wait still gets the reminder that follows
Actions that aren't ready yet
The builder lists some actions that don't work yet. Leave them out of your rules for now:
Create Task - the task isn't put on a board or assigned to anyone, so nobody sees it. Use Create Activity when you want something to land in a person's My Tasks
Send SMS, Send Invoice, Record Payment, Send Document, Complete Workflow Step and Request Approval - a run shows these as failed, skipped or not supported
Create Person creates a blank person record with no name
Generate Document - its Document Template box doesn't offer your document templates yet
Update Person only changes Department, and Update Field needs the field's system name rather than its label
Add Tag and Remove Tag - most records don't carry tags, and no screen shows them yet
Automations on a Project Board
Open a project and click Automations to see and build the rules that run on that board only - without leaving the board.
- A board rule offers the triggers that can happen on a board: task created, assigned, completed, status changed or overdue, and project created or completed
The board's own columns appear in the conditions, and Set Board Column and Move Task to Group pick from the board's columns and groups
- A board rule never runs for anything on another board
Rules that run across the whole business stay on the Automations page, where the Board column shows which rules belong to a board.
Organising Automations
As the list grows, group rules into folders - by module, by team, or by the outcome they serve. Click New Folder to add one. Folders show at the top of the list, and Move to folder... on a rule files it.
Filter the list by status, trigger or the person who created each rule. Duplicate copies a rule as a starting point, Pause stops a rule without losing it, and rules you no longer need can be archived rather than deleted.
Changed your mind? Undo at the top of the list (or Ctrl+Z) puts back rules you've just activated or paused - one or the ticked ones - and rules moved to a folder, by Move to folder... or by dragging.
Watching Automations Run
Open a rule and choose the Run History tab. Every execution is recorded as a run, showing:
- Which trigger fired and on which record
- The overall outcome - completed, completed with some actions skipped, completed with errors, waiting, skipped or failed
- Each action's result - done, skipped, failed, waiting or not supported - with the reason
- Where a run is waiting on a delay, and how long the delay is
Start a new rule with tight conditions, watch a few runs, then widen it once it's behaving.
Frequently asked questions
My automation isn't firing
Check five things in order: the rule is active; the trigger is the event you think it is (a leave request being submitted is a different trigger from being approved); the trigger's own settings and the conditions aren't excluding the records you expect; for a date-based trigger, a day has passed - they're checked once a day; and, for a rule built on a project board, the record is on that board. A run is only recorded once an event passes the conditions, so an empty run history usually means the conditions or trigger settings are filtering it out.
A run says an action was skipped, failed or not supported
Open the run on the Run History tab - each action shows its reason. The common ones: an email with no valid address in To, no business email account connected, or a From mailbox the person who chose it can no longer use; an action that needs a different kind of record (Send Payment Reminder only works on an invoice trigger); a status the action couldn't find; and the actions listed under "Actions that aren't ready yet" above.
Can one automation do several things?
Yes - add as many actions as you need and they run in order. Use a Wait / Delay action between them when the later steps shouldn't happen immediately.
Can I stop an automation emailing people while I test it?
Build the rule with only an in-app notification action first, watch the runs, then swap in the email action once you're happy with what it's matching.
Why was my new rule rejected as a duplicate?
Mployr blocks a rule with the same trigger and the same conditions as one that already exists, because both would fire on the same events. Find the existing rule and add your actions there, or change the conditions so the two rules cover different cases.
How do automations decide who to assign work to?
Assignment actions take a specific person, and Create Activity takes several. Where the rule works on a lead, its assignees are available as a condition, so you can build a rule for each person who owns opportunities and route their follow-ups to them.
Tips
- Name rules after the outcome, not the trigger - you'll be reading the list months later
- Start narrow, with tight conditions, then widen once you trust the rule
- Use folders from the start; a flat list of forty rules is hard to reason about
- Build board-specific rules from the board itself, so they can't fire anywhere else
- Check the run history after any change to a rule
- Prefer a delay over a separate scheduled rule when you want a follow-up - the run stays in one place
- Each report schedule is an automation too, so it's listed here with its run history
