Build and operate communication automations

An automation enrols a person after a qualifying event and works through ordered Wait and Send steps. It does not scan all history and message everybody simply because it was created.

Available triggers

• Member joins — despite the label, enrols any new active person record created after activation, including some guest and day-visitor records. Do not use it as a paid-members-only trigger.
• Membership or offering expiring — scans active paid holdings whose expiry date falls between now and the chosen number of days from now. It does not fire exactly that many days before expiry, and each person enrols only once per automation rather than once per holding or renewal.
• After a day-permit visit — enrols after the visit date, either once per visitor or once for each eligible visit.
• Manual segment — an owner deliberately enrols the people matching a segment.

Free or comped holdings and records that only have a current-period end without an expiry date do not satisfy the current expiry trigger. Always select one specific offering for this trigger. The current Any offering query is not safely scoped to one community and must not be activated.

Activation, pausing and history

Join scans use the activation timestamp, while day-permit scans use the activation calendar date, so an earlier visit on that same date can qualify. Expiry scans consider any current paid holding in the future-expiry window even when the holding predates activation.

Pausing stops processing and postpones due work. Reactivating sets a new activation time, so treat it as a fresh operating boundary and recheck the next eligible audience. There is no detailed per-run reporting console comparable to a campaign detail; use the automation records and outbound log when investigating a message.

Pause before editing steps. Existing runs resume at their saved step number against the latest step list; inserting, deleting or reordering steps can cause people mid-sequence to skip, repeat or receive changed messages.

Steps and channels

The web builder supports Wait steps and sends by email, in-app, SMS and WhatsApp. Push exists in the server message model but is not offered as a send step in the current automation builder.

Marketing automations apply the channel's opt-out checks. Address suppression is additionally applied to email, not universally to SMS or WhatsApp. A WhatsApp automation send is free-form; it does not automatically select an approved HSM. It is therefore suitable only inside an open 24-hour customer-service window unless the workflow is changed to use approved template handling.

For a Manual automation, test with a small segment. For automatic triggers, use a test community or one specific offering and a short first sequence. Check the outbound log after the trigger and after each wait before widening the audience.

Automatic enrolment scans are capped and not paged. Large matching populations can leave later records unprocessed; split the audience or use manual enrolment until paging is implemented.