To start creating an automation, click on “Automations” in the upper right corner of your screen. Then, click “Create an automation” to begin the setup process.
You can rename your automation right away to make it easier to understand what it does.
Creating a trigger
All automations start with a trigger that will prompt subsequent actions, so next, you will need to click “Choose a trigger”.
Once clicked, the available triggers will display for you to choose from. As of now, “When record enters a view”, "When record is created", "When record matches conditions", and "When record is updated" are the four triggers available. Click one of these options.
Select your preferred table for this automation. If you chose the "When a record enters a view" trigger, then you will also need to choose a specific view. Preferably, this view would be one you created specifically for this automation.
Testing a trigger
Choose “Test this step” to fetch a record and its values.
This testing is required if you need to use values from the record that triggered the automation in any later steps. Do not skip this step!
When the test is complete, the results will be displayed including the values for the record that triggered the automation. To view the values of the record, you can expand the section named “Field values”.
Creating an action
When you have successfully tested the trigger, click on “Add action”.
Once clicked, the available actions will display for you to choose from. Currently, there are six actions to choose from: "Send an email", "Create record", "Update record", "Run a script", "Send a Slack message", and "Send a MS Teams message" in the drop-down menu. Click one of these options.
In this example, we will choose to "send an email". After choosing this action, you will initially be able to add recipients, a subject line, and the message body.
The text in the body of the message can be a mix of static text and values from the triggering record. You can click the blue and white plus-sign to add values in from the triggering record. Additionally, you can access more values by clicking on the "Field values" drop-down arrow.
By clicking on the "Show more options" drop-down arrow, you will have the ability to customize four additional parts of the automatic email you send out, which includes "CC", "BCC", "From name", and "Reply to".
Testing an action
Test the step to make sure it is successful. Again, testing each step of the automation process ensures that your automation will work as expected. Finding more information about a particular action's test is a similar process to the trigger test mentioned earlier. Click on the drop-down menu next to the test result to view the values being pulled from any records attached to your automation.
You may realize during testing that you need to make a change in the table by adding or modifying fields. If you do that, be sure to retest all of the steps so that your changes are correctly reflected in the configuration of the automation.
After successfully testing the action, you can click "Done" and move onto turning on your automation!