Build automations by hand or with AI

An automation is a sequence that runs when something happens — an estimate goes out, a job is marked complete, an invoice goes past due. Messaging → Automations lists what you have; a new workspace starts with fourteen of them already written.

There are two ways to add one, and they end up in the same place.

By hand

New automation gives you an empty workflow and three things to set:

• Trigger — what starts it. New lead received, Estimate sent, Estimate approved, Visit scheduled, Before scheduled visit, Appointment rescheduled or cancelled, Technician en route, Job marked complete, Invoice issued, Invoice past due, or Manual / custom.
• Tag filter — who it speaks to. Defaults to Any contact, and the next section is about what happens when it does not.
• Workflow — the steps, in order. Each is either a message (SMS, Email, or both, with an optional preferred send time) or a delay.

Build by hand when you know exactly what you want to say, or when you are editing something that already works.

With AI

Generate with AI takes a description instead:

A nurture sequence for new leads: text right away, wait a day and email the
estimate details, then check in a few days later.

You also set how many messages you want. It comes back with a trigger, the steps and the copy already written, and you edit anything before adding it — nothing is saved until you press Add workflow.

What it will and will not do:

• It writes plain, short copy with no emoji and no markdown, and keeps SMS under 320 characters.
• It only uses merge tokens that actually exist, so you do not get {first_name} when the token is {customer_first}.
• It will not duplicate an automation you already have. It is told what is already in your workspace and asked to avoid it, so asking twice for the same thing gets you something different rather than a twin.
• It picks the channel per step — SMS for short time-sensitive notices, email where there is more to explain.

Build with AI when you know the shape of the follow-up but do not want to write five messages from scratch.

Tip

The two are not a choice you make once. Generating a sequence and then editing the wording by hand is usually faster than either on its own.

Tags take precedence, and this is the part to understand

A tag filter narrows an automation to contacts carrying that tag. What is not obvious is what it does to your other automations.

Once a contact matches a tag-targeted automation, the generic untagged one on the same trigger stands down.

So if you have:

Automation	Trigger	Tag filter
Estimate follow-up	Estimate sent	Any contact
HVAC replacement follow-up	Estimate sent	HVAC replacement

…then a contact tagged HVAC replacement hears the second one only. An untagged contact hears the first. Nobody gets both. That is deliberate: it is how you write one specific sequence without having to switch the general one off and lose it for everybody else.

The tag can arrive late, and that is handled

This is the bit worth reading twice.

Almost nothing tags a contact before it exists — the lead form takes no tags at all, and Zapier applies them after the lead is created. So at the moment a contact is enrolled they are usually still untagged, and the generic automation is the only honest choice.

So the check is made again before every single send. A tag landing mid-sequence stops the generic nurture and lets the targeted one carry on from there. A tag that never arrives leaves the generic one running.

Caution

A message already sent cannot be recalled. If the tag lands after the first message of the generic sequence has gone out, that message has gone out — only the rest of the sequence is redirected. If the distinction between two segments matters from the very first message, tag the contact before the trigger fires, not after.

Suppressed, not failed

When a send is skipped for either reason you will see it said plainly:

• Contact does not carry this automation’s tag.
• Superseded by a tag-targeted automation.

Those are the system working, not errors.

AI and tags

The AI builder can set a tag filter for you, and it only does so when your request is clearly about one segment — “a follow-up for HVAC replacement quotes” gets a tag; “a nurture sequence for new leads” does not, because it should run for everybody.

It will create the tag if you have not got it, and reuse an existing one whatever the capitalisation, so you do not end up with HVAC and hvac side by side.

Note

This is the one place automations and campaigns differ. A campaign can only use tags that already exist; an automation built with AI can invent one. If you want a campaign segmented by a tag, make sure the tag exists first.

Testing before it goes near a customer

Each automation has Test with a lead: pick a lead, then Preview to see every step rendered with their details, or Run test send to actually deliver the message steps to that lead now.

Caution

Run test send delivers real texts and emails, logged like any other send, with delays skipped so every step fires back to back. Use a lead that is you.