Automations

Automations let operators respond to operational and customer events without staff having to repeat each step manually.

They connect events across customers, companies, bookings, orders, enquiries, memberships, payments, forms, products, lists, tasks, notes, and email engagement to controlled platform actions.

Navigating to automations

Automations are configured under Marketing > Automations. Creating, editing, activating and archiving automations needs the Create or edit automations permission, which Admin and Manager roles have by default.

Build and publish

An automation is a visual graph with up to 20 nodes:

• Trigger: starts a run when a selected event occurs or a schedule is reached.
• Condition: tests event or record data and sends the run down matching branches.
• Wait: pauses a run for a defined period before continuing.
• Action: reads or changes data, creates follow-up work, or sends a configured email template.

Save while building to keep a draft without making it live. Activation requires the subscription and review checks described below. An active automation can be paused, and earlier immutable versions remain available for inspection or restoration.

Activation checks

Automations require an active marketing subscription. An automation containing an SMS action requires the Email + SMS/WhatsApp marketing plan and a ready messaging account.

Before an automation runs live, Tiquo AI reviews:

• trigger, branch, wait, condition, and action setup;
• contradictory, unreachable, repeated, or dangerous workflow logic;
• email and SMS sender-reputation risks;
• whether marketing and transactional messages are classified correctly.

An Important finding blocks activation until it is corrected. An Attention finding is non-critical and can be reviewed and consciously accepted. A marketing message classified as transactional is blocking because it could bypass marketing delivery protections; a transactional message classified as marketing is a safer, non-blocking recommendation.

Some findings can't be checked by Tiquo AI, because they depend on things only you know, such as who is on a list, when customers will be added or which business dates apply. These never block activation.

People with the Override Tiquo AI automation review permission (Admin only by default) can activate past other Important findings. They must enter a reason, and the override, the reason and the findings are recorded in the automation's activity log. A marketing message classified as transactional, or a review that didn't finish, stays blocked for everyone.

The review is tied to the current automation revision. Editing the workflow invalidates the approval and requires a new review. If Tiquo AI cannot complete the review, the automation is not activated; retry when the service is available.

Triggers and scope

Choose one primary event and, when the same workflow should respond to related events, add further event types. Available trigger families include:

• Customer and company creation or updates
• Order, booking, enquiry, membership, payment, task, and note lifecycle events
• Form submissions
• Product creation, updates, and low-stock or out-of-stock events
• Customers joining or leaving a list
• Lost carts, with optional sublocation and order-item-type matching
• Email sent, delivered, opened, clicked, bounced, or failed events
• Scheduled and manually started runs

Scope a trigger where appropriate. For example, select lists for list events, sublocations for booking or order events, plans for membership events, enquiry types, note categories, a specific form, or a specific tracked email link. Schedules can run once or recur at interval, daily, or weekly frequencies in the selected timezone.

Dynamic segment triggers are not offered for new automations. The Customer matches segment trigger has been retired: automations that still use it no longer start new runs, and they can't be duplicated or test-run until you choose a different trigger.

Membership paid

The Membership paid trigger runs once for each membership payment that settles. That includes the first payment, a joining fee collected separately, and every renewal, whether it was paid online, by invoice or payment link, or at the till. It works for customer and company memberships.

Along with the usual membership fields, the trigger provides:

Use these fields as trigger filters to narrow the automation. For example, to welcome new members only once, filter on Is renewal payment being false and Payment type being membership.

Conditions and data mapping

Conditions use each field's own type. True/false fields such as Is renewal payment offer Yes and No, and Payment type is a dropdown. Rules that were saved with the text "true" or "false" match too.

Conditions can compare trigger data, values returned by earlier nodes, and fields on related records. Branches allow one run to follow different paths, such as treating an urgent enquiry differently from a routine request.

Actions expose output that later nodes can map into their inputs. Use find-record and find-or-create actions when the workflow needs to resolve a related record before updating it.

Actions

Available action families include:

• Update customer parameters, status, interests, favourites, lists, and notes
• Add an active discount, issue store credit, or issue a pass to a customer
• Add a discount or issue store credit to a company
• Create or update tasks and notes
• Update booking status, time, assigned staff, or notes
• Update order status or payment status
• Update product status, price, or stock
• Update membership status, plan, dates, cancellation, or notes
• Update enquiry status, priority, assignees, customer, or company data
• Find records, find or create records, and transform values for later steps
• Send a selected email template

Actions that could make a sensitive lifecycle change can pause for staff approval instead of applying the change immediately.

Email templates sent by an automation keep each link's Personalise booking link setting. A personalised link to a hosted booking page opens with the customer's details filled in and skips the one-time email code for 30 days. See Booking links.

A Send email step's Reply-to address can be a fixed value or mapped from the trigger. When you map it, only fields that hold an email address are offered, so choosing Customer from trigger lists the customer's email fields and preselects one. A fixed value that isn't an email address shows an error under the field. If the reply-to is the email of the customer the step sends to, the field warns that their replies would go back to them. Neither stops you saving. When the email is sent, a reply-to that isn't a valid email address or is the recipient's own address is left out, and the email still goes out with replies going to your sender address.

Customer and company discount actions require an active discount. A company discount can either stay on the company or inherit to its customers. Store credit actions require a positive amount and a three-letter currency code.

Trigger filters can compare fields carried by the event before the graph starts. Use these for cases such as a lost cart that contains a booking, a particular product type, or a value above a threshold. Conditions remain useful when the workflow needs data returned by an earlier lookup or action.

Test and monitor

Selecting an active automation opens its workflow as a read-only graph. Email, SMS and WhatsApp steps show how they've done: Recipients, Open rate and Click rate for email, Recipients, Delivered and Failed for SMS, and Recipients for WhatsApp. Close the graph, or select Edit to open the builder. Draft and paused automations open straight in the builder. Message results come from recent runs and follow the 90-day run history, so busy steps show their most recent sends.

Use a dry run to test the graph without applying live changes. After publishing, use run history and step details to inspect the trigger payload, branch decisions, outputs, and failures. A failed message step names the customer it couldn't reach, for example "Alex Smith has no email address, so the email wasn't sent." Failed work can be retried from the relevant step when the underlying issue has been corrected.

Example automations

A few common flows:

• Post-booking follow-up: when a booking is completed, wait 24 hours, then send a thank-you email with a feedback link.
• Membership welcome: when a membership is created, send the configured welcome email.
• Win-back: if a customer has not visited in 90 days, send a reactivation email with a one-time discount code.
• Enquiry chase: if an enquiry sits in Waiting on Customer for more than 7 days, send a polite nudge.

To reuse a workflow safely, open its actions menu and choose Duplicate. Tiquo creates a draft copy with the same graph and settings, allowing the copy to be reviewed and changed before it is activated.

Because automations work from live operational data, they keep customer communications timely without adding staff overhead.

Website enquiry parameters and consent

For enquiry creation through the DOM/Hosted packages or Customer API, trigger conditions can read submitted enquiry answers from enquiryParameters.<enquiryParameterId> in the enquiry.created event. Values are normalized strings: compare a Yes/No answer with "true" or "false"; multiselects are JSON strings. Only submitted non-empty values are included. Other enquiry creation sources may omit this event field.

This event does not carry customer.details or customerParameters. Enquiry submission can fill missing customer-editable parameters through customer.customerParameterValues or legacy customer.details, but never overwrites stored preferences or consent defaults. A Customer parameter condition reads the customer's saved profile value; Set customer parameter remains a separate automation action. An enquiry answer with a consent-like label is not the customer's Marketing/SMS Opt-In preference.

Enquiry triggers are not gated by marketing consent. Each outbound message has its own marketing/transactional classification: marketing email checks Marketing Opt-In and marketing messaging checks SMS Opt-In. A transactional classification applies to that message, not to the whole automation.

Trigger on selected enquiry stages

Scope enquiry-stage triggers to the chosen enquiry types and stages. The automation starts when an enquiry enters one of those selected stages. Empty or unavailable stage selections prevent activation; update the trigger if the pipeline changes.

Task and note actions can insert trigger fields directly into their text. Enquiry actions require an enquiry context, so use a lookup first when the trigger did not supply one.