Automation examples for onboarding

Onboarding one person is a string of small things to remember: send the invite, give the driver the license questions, chase at a week, mark them verified once the certificate is approved. Automations can carry all of it. Here are five rules to build, in the order most people build them, and one full chain that puts them together.

Every trigger and action named here is covered in detail in Automations. Build each rule from New automation on the Automations page, and switch it on with Active (running) once you are happy with it.

Recipe one: invite them the moment you add them

Trigger: Someone is added.
Action: Send their invite.

Adding a name to a portal now sends that person their link in your Portal invite wording, with nobody clicking Send.

Each person gets one automatic invite per portal. Taking somebody off and adding them back does not invite them again; use the Send button on the portal when you genuinely want a re-send. If they have no email address, or an invite went out in the last five minutes, or your email allowance is used up, the invite is skipped and Recent activity says which.

Recipe two: give each role its own pack

One portal can serve several roles when each role's questions sit in their own section.

On the portal, add a Section for each role (Drivers, Kitchen) with that role's requests under it. Open Limit who sees this and leave the list of named people empty.
Trigger: Someone is added.
Action: Give them a section, with the section's title.
Action: Send their invite, below it, so they open a link that already holds their pack.

Someone is added fires for everybody, so run one portal per role, each with its own rule. Or skip the rule and gate the section on an earlier answer ("What are you here as?") instead. The matching rules are in Giving somebody a section.

Recipe three: the chase ladder

Most of a chase ladder already exists as system emails, with wording written for you. The outstanding requests reminder and invite not opened are switched on from the start. For the rest, open the card, set the days, switch it on. A sensible starting set:

Outstanding requests reminder at 7 days, and again at 14 (switched on).
Rejected upload reminder at 7 days.
Document expiring reminder at 30 days.
Document expired reminder at 7 days.
Time to ask again at 365 days, for documents with no expiry date.
Invite not opened at 3 days (switched on) and Upload not reviewed at 2 days, which both email you.

Build your own on top when you want more rungs. On the document triggers you stack rules: a second Document expiring rule at 7 days, or Rejected upload not replaced at 14 and again at 21. Each fires once per document and stops as soon as a new file arrives.

Requests not completed is the exception. It starts once per person per portal in total, across the system email and every rule on that trigger, so a second rule never fires for the same person, and sending the invite again does not start it over. Every follow-up lives inside that one rule. The outstanding requests reminder ships as steps 1 to 4 below; open it and add step 5 if you want to hear about it:

Trigger: Requests not completed, 7 days.
Email the person.
Wait 7 days.
Email the person again.
Send account email, so you know they still have not finished.

If they finish during the wait, the steps below it do not run.

Recipe four: verify them without remembering to

Trigger: Document approved.
Action: Set their status, and choose the status (for example Verified).
Optional: Email the person below it, telling them.

Set their status does not email anybody on its own, which is why the email is its own step.

Hang a status like "cleared" off Document approved rather than Requests completed. Completed means they submitted everything; approved means somebody looked at it and said yes. You need at least one status set up before the action offers anything to pick.

Recipe five: tell someone who has no login

The account email goes to your login address, which is often not the person working the compliance queue.

Trigger: Document expired, 0 days.
Action: Email an address, with your compliance inbox, and [document name] and [name] in the subject.

This sends straight away. Like the organizer email, it counts toward your daily email limit and your monthly email allowance. Only the email to your own account address does not.

One whole chain

A casual staff portal, set up once:

Rule	Trigger	Actions
Welcome	Someone is added	Give them a section ("New starters"), Send their invite
Nudge (on from the start)	Requests not completed, 7 days	Email the person, Wait 7 days, Email the person
Check the address (on from the start)	Invite not opened, 3 days	Send account email
Verify them	Document approved	Set their status ("Verified"), Email the person
Tell compliance	Document expired, 0 days	Email an address

A name typed on Monday becomes an invited, chased and verified person, and nobody keeps a list.

The Nudge row is the Outstanding requests reminder as it ships, so edit that rather than building a second rule on the same trigger. Only one of them can start for each person, and whichever runs first wins. If you do build your own, switch the system email off.

Check it before you switch it on

A rule that matches nothing looks the same as one that is working.

Preview shows how an email reads with sample details. Send test to me puts it in your own inbox with [Test] at the start of the subject.

That tests the wording, not the trigger. For the trigger, put yourself on a test portal with your own email address and watch Recent activity at the foot of the Automations page. If a rule ran and nothing arrived, see when an automation does not send.

Automations is the reference for every trigger, action and token.
Creating requests for documents and info covers the sections a rule fills.
Reviewing and approving uploads covers the queue that Document approved and Upload not reviewed watch.
Self-registration covers join links, which fire Self-registration rather than Someone is added.