Marketing
Workflow Automation
Triggers, conditions and actions available in the workflow builder.
What it is
An automation is one rule: WHEN an event happens, IF its conditions hold, THEN run these steps in order. The structure mirrors what actually executes — an event arrives, conditions are evaluated, then steps run — so what you build reads the same way it runs. Saving an automation compiles it with the same checker that runs it live, so an incomplete rule can be saved mid-edit, but it will not fire until the problems it lists are fixed.
8
Run statuses
2
Execution modes
2
Concurrency policies
Triggers (WHEN)
A trigger is an event type — for example a form submission, a link click, or a lead being created. Each event declares what context it can supply, which is what lets the step palette hide steps that event can't actually support (creating a lead from a submission needs the submission itself, so that step is unavailable on an event that has none). Every event also carries a scope note: a broad-sounding event like "link clicked" fires for every instance of that kind of link unless you narrow it with a condition, not just the one you had in mind when you read the label.
Conditions (IF)
Conditions are built against the fields the chosen event exposes, and compiled as JSONLogic. A field's value can come from a fixed set of choices, a live lookup (like your current lists or lead sources), or free text when the value is genuinely open. A field whose value is itself a list of things — for example, which fields changed — offers "contains" and "does not contain" instead of equality. Leaving the condition empty matches every occurrence of the event.
Steps (THEN)
Steps run in order. The ones you can add from the editor include:
- 1
Create or update lead
Creates a new lead, or updates a matching one, from the event’s data. - 2
Create opportunity
Opens a sales opportunity — needs a lead to already exist in context. - 3
Notify my team
Emails the people who should know this happened. - 4
Add to list / Remove from list
Changes a lead’s membership in an audience list. - 5
Adjust lead score
Moves a lead’s score up (or down) by an amount you set. - 6
Call a webhook
Sends the event’s data to an external URL.
Some steps aren’t authored here
Moving a lead to another campaign, or also adding them to one, is campaign-exit-only — it's authored where the campaign's exits are configured, not in the general automation editor, since a move only makes sense with a campaign to move someone out of. Some automations are similarly owned by another object (a CTA, for instance) and are edited there instead — the editor shows a link to the right place rather than a form that would silently be overwritten.Execution and runs
A run starts the moment a matching event arrives and its conditions pass. Runs can wait — for a delay, or for a later event — so waiting is a normal, healthy status, not a stall. A run always finishes on the rule version it started with, so editing a live automation never changes work already in flight — only future runs pick up your changes. The concurrency policy controls what happens when the same automation would run twice at once for the same key: run them in parallel, or let a new run replace the one already in progress.
Related
New to Business Automation? Start with the Automate your first follow-up guide. Automations often act on the same forms and lists covered in Smart Forms and Campaigns.