Building an automator

Select + New Automator on the Automators list, or select an existing row, to open the builder. This article covers the building blocks; see Automator step types for what each kind of step does, and Publishing an automator for validating, publishing, and what starts an automator running.

The toolbar

At the top: Back, the automator's name and a status badge, plus a Home stage picker choosing which pipeline stage this automator's runs are grouped under on a deal (see A deal's stage progress and Running an automator on a deal). Leave it on Situational (no stage) for an automator that isn't tied to one particular stage — it still shows up on a deal's Automators tab, just under "No stage" instead of a stage group. If you've already added a trigger that fires on a status or stage, the picker suggests that stage for you (with a small "Suggested from your trigger" note) — pick something else, or leave it on Situational, whenever the suggestion isn't right.

Right beside Home stage is a Home role picker — the team role whose holder becomes the owner of each run for a given deal (whoever's staffed into that role on the deal — see Automator step types for how steps default to the Home role as their assignee, which shows the role's name, such as Home role — Transaction Coordinator). Leave it on No home role and a run falls back to the deal's TC. Roles that map to a deal seat (ACQ/TC/Dispo/PM) show that abbreviation next to their name so you can tell them apart at a glance.

You can set both pickers on a brand-new automator before you've ever published it. Your choices are saved with the draft (reload or come back later and they're still there) and take effect the moment you publish for the first time, so the automator goes live already owned by the right role. Pick a home role and the steps assigned to the Home role show its name right away. If your role can only build automators for My lanes, you can only pick a home role you hold yourself, and you can't change the home stage or role of a draft that's already in a lane you don't hold. A new draft that belongs to a lane you don't hold opens read-only, with a banner saying "This draft belongs to another lane — you can view it but not change it." A published automator in a lane you don't hold opens the same way, showing its live version, with "This automator belongs to another lane — you can view it but not change it." If it hasn't been published yet, you see the lane owner's open draft the same way. If it has no published version and nobody has a draft open, you get a page saying "This automator belongs to another lane and has nothing to view yet" with a Back to Automators button. If you only have view access to Automators, every automator opens read-only the same way: you see its open working draft if there is one, otherwise its live version. If it has neither, you get a page saying "This automator has nothing to view yet" with a Back to Automators button.

On the right: History (see Publishing an automator), an Advanced menu (see below), a List/Diagram toggle, Save, Preview, and Publish. On a narrower browser window (a laptop screen, for example), History and the List/Diagram toggle move into the Advanced menu instead of taking their own space in the toolbar — widen the window, or open Advanced, to find them; the automator's name always stays fully readable (it truncates with "…" rather than disappearing, and hovering shows the full name).

Most automators never need the Advanced menu — skip this section unless you're building an automator that's only ever meant to be started by another automator, like a "cure this lien" automator started once per lien by a parent's Sub-automator step. For that case, the Advanced menu holds Starting inputs — the values the parent hands this automator when it starts it. Open it and you'll see an empty state reminding you that most automators don't need this; add one, give it a label, and it becomes pickable anywhere this automator's own steps pick a collected field. Once you've declared at least one, a Starting inputs count also shows directly in the toolbar as a shortcut back into the same editor.

Select the name to rename it — it turns into a text field; press Enter or click away to save, or Esc to cancel. A name has to be unique on your team, so a taken name shows an error instead of saving. You can also rename from the Automators list without opening the builder — see Automators overview.

If you started this draft but never published it — a brand-new automator you haven't finished, or don't want after all — a Discard draft button also appears there. It deletes the draft outright and takes you back to the Automators list; there's no undo, so it asks you to confirm first. If the draft was already deleted or published somewhere else, you'll see "That draft was already deleted." and land back on the list. Once an automator has been published at least once, there's no way to discard it this way — its version history keeps it recoverable instead (see Publishing an automator).

An unfinished, never-published draft you left completely empty — no rename, no steps added — is cleaned up automatically after 24 hours, so the Automators list doesn't collect abandoned "+ New Automator" clicks forever. Give it any name of your own, or add even one step, and it's kept indefinitely no matter how long it sits untouched. If you come back to a draft that was cleaned up (or discarded from another tab or by a teammate), the page shows This draft no longer exists instead of the editor, with a button back to the Automators list — never a canvas that looks live but silently can't save.

Runs on: a deal or a contact

A new automator runs on a deal unless you change it. Just under the toolbar, Runs on offers Deal and Contact — pick Contact for work about one person rather than a deal, such as following up with a new buyer or checking in with an agent.

An automator that runs on a contact can use these steps for now: Instruction, Decision, Condition, Form, Task, Email, Text, Action, Recurring, Wait and End. The step picker only shows those.

• Who does it. Assign a step to a specific person, the Home role (the run's owner — the contact's owner when they have one), or Contact owner — whoever owns the contact. If the contact has no owner, a Contact owner step goes to the run's owner instead and the run keeps going; the contact's activity shows "This contact has no owner" so you know to set one.
• Rules about the person. A Decision's auto-answer rule (or a Condition) checks the contact: Buyer tier (including Unverified, or "is at or above" a tier), Contact type (for example "includes Buyer"), a contact field such as Talked to them live is set, Next follow-up, Owner or Do not text, or one of your contact custom fields.
• Contact dates. Due dates and waits can count from A contact date — Next follow-up, Birthday (the contact's next birthday), Last contacted or Contact created — as well as from when the run started or the step was reached. A contact date lands at 9:00 AM in your team's time zone, and if someone changes the date on the contact, the wait or due date moves with it. For example, a Wait set to 1 day before Next follow-up wakes the morning before the follow-up.
• Forms ask questions only — a question can't save to a deal field.
• Emails and texts to the person. An Email or Text step can go to This contact — the person the run is about, at their primary email or phone — as well as a Specific contact, an Email address or (for an email) an answer Collected earlier. A new Email or Text step starts addressed to This contact. Merge fields come from the person: Contact First Name, Contact Owner First Name, Buyer Tier, Next Follow-up Date, Preferred Channel and the rest of the Contact group, plus your contact custom fields under Custom fields, the sender, your team and today's date. To see how it reads, select Preview with contact… on the Email step and pick someone. A text sent this way stays on the contact's timeline — it isn't filed on any deal they're on — and still only goes out during your team's texting hours. An email that waits for review shows up on the contact's Overview under Pending automator emails.
• Changing the person. An Action step — or a Form's On submit list, or a Decision option's When picked list — can Set buyer tier, Set follow-up, Add to a list, Change contact owner, Set a contact field or Log a note on This contact, a contact picked on a form, or a specific contact. A new Action step starts as Set follow-up a week out. See Changing a contact from an automator.

Deal seats, deal roles, deal dates, conditions about the deal, actions that change the deal, a Recurring step's email, and emails or texts to the seller, buyer, a vendor, a deal seat or your buyer list only work on an automator that runs on a deal — publishing one that still has them stops with a message on the step, such as "Seller, buyer, vendor, deal seat, deal team and buyer list recipients only work when the automator runs on a deal." Deal merge fields such as {{seller.first_name}} or {{property.address}} are refused the same way: "Deal fields ({{seller.first_name}}) only work when the automator runs on a deal. Use contact fields like {{contact.first_name}} instead." The reverse holds too: Contact owner, contact dates, rules about the contact, the This contact recipient, the This contact choice on a contact action and the Contact merge fields only work on an automator that runs on a contact. A deal automator's contact actions act on the deal's seller or buyer instead.

A contact automator starts from a contact trigger — a type added to a contact, a buyer tier change, a follow-up date arriving, no contact in a set number of days, or a birthday (see Publishing an automator) — or by hand: give it a Manual trigger, publish it, then open a contact and select Start automator on their Automations card (see Viewing a contact). The card lists every run on that person and what it's waiting on. Its tasks show up in My Tasks with the contact's name, its notifications say "for ⟨name⟩", and selecting either opens the run on the contact's card. Archiving the contact ends its runs.

You choose Runs on before the first publish. After that it's fixed — the builder shows "Runs on: Contact. Set when this automator was first published." A deal automator can't start a contact automator (or the reverse) from a Sub-automator step.

Deal on hold and cancelled

Next to Home role are two checkboxes controlling what happens to a run already in progress when its deal's status changes:

• Pause when the deal is on hold — on by default. When the deal goes on hold, any run of this automator on that deal freezes right where it is (its timeline stays intact) and picks back up automatically the moment the deal comes off hold. Turn this off for an automator that needs to keep working through a hold — a compliance or paperwork task, for example.
• End when the deal is cancelled — on by default. When the deal is cancelled, any run of this automator on that deal (and its open tasks) ends. Turn this off for an automator specifically built to handle cancelled deals.

When a change to these two takes effect depends on whether the automator has been published yet, and the line under the checkboxes tells you which applies:

• Applies right away, without publishing. — on an automator that's already published. Ticking or unticking a box changes the live automator immediately, including for runs already in progress. It doesn't wait for Publish, and publishing other edits later never changes it back.
• Applies when you first publish. — on a brand-new automator you haven't published yet. Your choice is saved with the draft and takes effect the first time you publish.

Both apply to the automator's own steps too: if one of its Action steps cancels the deal or puts it on hold, the run ends or pauses right after that step unless the matching box is off.

These two checkboxes control what happens to runs already in progress — separately, the deal being put on hold, taken off hold, cancelled, or closed can also start a new run, since they're four of the options under the Deal event trigger. See Publishing an automator for setting up triggers.

The step list

An automator is a vertical list of steps, connected top to bottom. Hover between two steps (or use the + Add step row at the end of a branch) to insert a new one from a grouped picker — Human steps (Instruction, Decision, Task, Form, Email, Email your buyer list), Automated actions (Action, Sub-automator, Recurring), and Flow control (Condition, Wait, End).

A Decision or Condition step splits into branches — each branch is its own indented list underneath, headed "If: the step = the branch". Every branch gets its own list the moment you add the step, even before it has any steps of its own: an empty branch says "No steps on this branch yet" along with the step it continues to, and has its own + Add step. Use that button to build off a branch — a step you add there belongs to that branch only, and the other branches keep going straight to the step below. (The Decision panel on the right repeats where each branch goes, under the branch's name.) The line under a Decision or Condition that hasn't split yet is labeled Add step for all branches — a step added there is shared by every branch. Once the branches go different ways, the spot where they come back together (the Merged step, or End) gets its own insert line just above it, and the + Add step at the bottom of the list adds before End: either way, the new step is one every branch flows into, followed by whatever came next. Deeply nested branches collapse into an Open path link so the list doesn't run off the page; selecting it opens that branch on its own with a breadcrumb back to where you were. A step that jumps back to an earlier point, or across from another branch, shows as a continues at reference instead of repeating the step.

Selecting a step opens its settings on the right — a right-hand panel with that step's own fields, a Delete and Duplicate at the bottom, and any validation problems for that step listed inline (see Publishing an automator). On a wider screen, drag the handle on the panel's left edge to give it more (or less) room — double- click the handle to reset it back to its default width. Your chosen width is remembered the next time you open the builder.

A step's ... menu has Duplicate, Copy step ID, Move up, Move down, and Delete. A Decision or Condition acts together with everything in its branches. Move up and Move down carry the whole block — the Decision and the steps on each of its branches — past the single step on the other side, so a step can also move up or down past a Decision, and the branches still come back together afterward. Delete removes the Decision and the steps in its branches and reconnects the steps around it; you're asked first ("Delete this Decision and the 3 steps in its branches? You can undo this with Undo (Cmd+Z)."), and Undo (Cmd+Z / Ctrl+Z) puts it all back. Duplicate copies the Decision and its branch steps, placed just after the step where its branches come back together (or just before End, or before the next Decision).

When one can't be done, it's greyed out and hovering it says why — for example, a Decision that rejoins at End can't move down ("Nothing below this Decision to move past — add a step after it first."), a Decision can't move past another Decision, and a move (of any step, not just a Decision) is refused when another path also leads into one of the two steps being swapped (a retry that loops back to it, or an approval that sends rejected work back to it, say), a branch ends the automator early, or an email has its own separate no-reply path that skips ahead (so it can't be reordered past its neighbour), because the move would change what that path runs. The message names the step causing it and what to change first — for example, "Approve price" sends rejected work back to "Form", so "Form" can't swap places with "Note" — "Note" would stop running again on a reject. Change the go-back first. The same goes for moving a Decision: if an approval further down sends rejected work back to the Decision, an approval sends it back to the step the Decision would swap with, or an approval inside one of its branches sends it to a step above it, the Decision stays put until you change that go-back. Moving an approval past a neighbour is allowed when nothing else points at either step, and a note tells you which steps will now (or will no longer) run again when it's rejected. If an action is refused after you start it, you'll see a message saying what to do instead.

Instructions and video

Most steps have an Instructions field — a Write/Preview toggle, a small toolbar (Bold, Italic, Bulleted list, Link), an optional Video URL, and a repeatable Links list. A YouTube, Loom, or Vimeo link plays inline for whoever's on that step; any other video link still saves but shows as a plain link instead of an inline preview.

Saving your work

Every edit you make in a step's panel saves automatically — there's no separate step to remember. The Save button in the toolbar shows what's happening:

• All changes saved · [time] — everything is saved; the time is your last save. Selecting it while there's nothing new to save just confirms with a brief "Saved" message.
• Save — you have changes that haven't saved yet (they'll save on their own in a couple of seconds, or select the button to save right away).
• Saving… — a save is in progress.
• Retry save — a save failed twice in a row (usually a connection blip), and you'll see one "Failed to save automator" message. The builder doesn't keep retrying in the background. Select Retry save to try again, or just keep editing — your next change starts saving again on its own.
• Switching versions or automators — if you have an edit that hasn't saved yet, the builder saves it first, so you don't lose it. If that save fails you'll see "Failed to save your last edit to [name]". If someone else changed the automator in the meantime, you'll see "Your last edit wasn't saved — someone else changed this automator."

If you select Publish while a save is still running, the button shows it's busy, waits for the save to finish, and then opens the publish dialog — no second click needed. If that save fails, nothing is published and you'll see "Couldn't save your changes, so nothing was published. Retry save, then publish."

Your edits save even while a step is only partly filled in — a toggle you've turned on but haven't finished configuring, a dropdown field with one option instead of two, a branch you haven't named yet. Nothing you've typed is ever silently dropped for being incomplete; switch to another step and back and it's still there. What's unfinished shows up as a validation message next to that step and in the banner above the step list, and keeps Publish disabled until it's resolved — see Publishing an automator.

The diagram view

Switch the toolbar's toggle to Diagram for an auto-arranged flowchart of the same automator — useful for seeing the overall shape at a glance. Selecting a step opens its settings on the right, same as list view. Hover any connecting line for a + that opens the same step picker as list view. The lines leaving a Decision or Condition step — one per branch, each with the branch's name — always show their +, so you can add a step to a specific branch without hovering; when several branches go to the same next step, their lines sit side by side so each one stays separate. Use the + Add step below the last step to add one to the end. You still can't drag steps around, rewire connections, or delete a step from here — switch back to List for that.

Automators (Legacy)

Admins may also see an Automators (Legacy) entry in Settings — a frozen sandbox of an older builder that no longer runs on deals. It's kept read-only for reference; build and edit everything in the builder described above instead.

Common issues

• Can't edit anything — you're viewing a past version, or you don't have edit access, or it's a new draft that belongs to another lane (a banner says so); a View only badge appears in the toolbar when that's the case.
• An edit seems to have disappeared — it hasn't; every edit saves even while a step is incomplete (see "Saving your work" above). If a field looks empty again after switching steps, check that step for a validation message — it's probably still there, just flagged as needing one more pick (a deal field, an option, a name) before it's done.