A form's automation runs once for every response, as it arrives. Use it to add the people who write in to your contacts, link them to their company, open a deal for each enquiry, hand the response to the right person and forward it by email.
Automations are part of the Orbit and Landing plans. On Launch, you can see the tab but not add an automation. The Newsletter sign-up form's own automation is the exception: it runs on every plan.
You need to be able to change the form. Only those people see its Automations tab. See Who can see a form.
Each step reads its details from the form's fields, so add the fields first: an Email field for a person, and a Text field for a name or a company.
The Contact form your organisation is given to start from comes with an automation, New Contact, which finds or creates the person and their company. Select it to see how it's built, or to change it.
A form has one automation, which holds every step you want to run.
Open the form and choose the Automations tab.
Choose Add automation.
Give it a Name, for example "Add enquiries to contacts". Switched on is on to start with.
Choose Add a step, pick what should happen, and fill in its settings.
Add more steps, up to 10.
Choose Create automation.
There's nothing to choose for what sets it off. Every response to the form does.
Once the form has its automation, Add automation is no longer shown. Select the automation to add, change or remove its steps, then choose Save automation.
Step | What it does |
|---|---|
Assign the response | Gives the response to a member, who is notified. |
Find or create the person | Looks for a person in your contacts with the email address given. If there isn't one, it adds them. |
Find or create the company | Looks for a company in your contacts with the name given. If there isn't one, it adds it. |
Create a deal | Creates a deal in the stage you choose. |
Forward by email | Emails the whole response to an address. |
Add to a list | Puts the person the response was filed with on one of your own lists. |
Remove from a list | Takes that person off one of your own lists. |
If / else | Runs different steps depending on what was answered. |
The person, company and deal steps file the response with what they found or created. Each shows as a chip on the response in the inbox, and the response shows on that record's Inbox tab.
Assign the response to: the member who should have it. They need to be on the form.
They're notified, and the response shows as theirs in the inbox.
Their email address is in: the Email field that holds their address.
Their full name, or first name, is in: a Text or Email field, if you like. Without one, they're named after their email address.
Their last name is in: a Text or Email field. Use it only if your form asks for first and last names separately.
Their phone number is in: a Phone field, if you like. The number is saved when it's an international one, like +44 1632 960000.
Opt them in to marketing: a switch, off to start with. When it's on, someone who agrees to your privacy policy on the form is opted in to marketing, including someone already in your contacts. It needs the form's privacy policy agreement switched on in its Settings, and a privacy policy set in your organisation's brand settings, so the switch is on the form. Nobody is opted out by it. A live form can't have this on without both, and you're told which is missing when you save. To email each person a link to confirm first, see Collect newsletter sign-ups.
Add a new person as: the lifecycle a new person starts at.
When one field holds their whole name, it's split into a first and last name for you:
A title at the start is left out: "Mr Test User" is saved as Test User.
Their last name keeps the words that belong to it: "Ludwig van Beethoven" is Ludwig and van Beethoven, and "Martin Luther King Jr" is Martin Luther and King Jr.
A name written surname first, with a comma, is read that way: "Lovelace, Ada" is Ada Lovelace.
One word is their first name, and their last name is saved as "(not given)".
If both fields are answered, the names are saved as they were given. If only the last name is, their first name is saved as "(not given)".
The company's name is in: the Text or Email field that holds the company's name.
Add a new company as: the lifecycle a new company starts at.
Create the deal in: the stage the deal starts in. Only open stages are offered.
Name the deal after: a Text or Email field, if you like. Without one, the deal is named after the form.
Assign the deal to: Whoever the response is assigned to, A specific member or Nobody.
Send it to: the address the response is emailed to, such as a shared mailbox. If your organisation has set up its own email addresses, they are suggested as you click or type. Choose one, or type any other address.
The response is still kept in the inbox. Replying to the email replies to whoever sent the response.
The email is sent from your organisation's own address when it has one it can send from. If it has more than one, the address that was set up first is used. Otherwise it is sent from 53°.
If / else checks what the response answered and sends it down one path. It's always the last step, and it needs a Dropdown, Single choice or Multiple choice field on the form.
Choose Add a step, then If / else.
Select the first path. Under Take this path when, choose All of these or Any of these.
For each condition, choose the Field, a Comparison of Is or Is not, and one or more Options. Choose Add a condition for another, up to 5.
Add the steps that path should run, up to 5.
Choose Add a path for another set of conditions. An If / else step can have up to 4 paths.
Add steps under Otherwise for a response that matches no path, if you like.
A response takes the first path whose conditions its answers meet, and only that path's steps run. A path can run any of the other steps, but not another If / else.
For example, to hand out responses by a "Department" dropdown, add a path for each option and put Assign the response on each, with a different member. To forward only some responses, put Forward by email on a path.
A question left unanswered counts as none of its options, so Is doesn't match it and Is not does.
Whatever order the steps are in, what one automation finds or creates is linked up:
The person and the company are linked, so the person shows as working at the company.
The deal gets the person and the company as its contacts.
One order does matter. For a deal to go to Whoever the response is assigned to, put Assign the response before Create a deal.
Nobody is there to fix a problem when a response arrives, so a step that can't run is skipped and the rest carry on.
If the field a step reads from wasn't answered, that step is skipped. Make the field Required on the form to avoid this.
If the member a response should be assigned to has left your organisation, it isn't assigned.
If the deal's stage has been deleted or is no longer open, the deal isn't created.
If a deal should go to whoever the response is assigned to and nobody is, or the member has left, the deal is still created, with nobody assigned.
Add to a list and Remove from a list act on the person a Find or create the person step found or added earlier in the same automation. Without one, they're skipped. If the list has been deleted, they're skipped too.
Run history shows which steps were skipped and why.
Use the switch at the start of its row on the Automations tab. Select the automation to edit it, or use the bin icon on its row to delete it. Deleting it removes its run history too.
The Newsletter sign-up form's automation can't be deleted, because the form needs it. Switch it off instead.
Select the automation and open Run history. Each run shows how it went, such as Succeeded, Partly ran, Skipped or Failed. Choose Show details to see each step. Choose Load more runs for older ones.
Someone already in your contacts is left as they are. An automation finds a person by email address and a company by name, and never edits either.
Contacts an automation adds get the source Form, so you can filter for them in your contacts.
A new person needs a first and last name. A name given in one field is split into the two. If it holds one word, their last name is saved as "(not given)".
A phone number that isn't international, starting with +, isn't saved. The person is still added.
Whoever a response is assigned to is notified once, even if they were also told when it arrived.
A locked response doesn't set off the automation until it's unlocked. See Manage responses in the inbox.
If your plan stops including automations, the one you've built is kept but paused. It starts running again when your plan includes them.
Duplicating a form doesn't copy its automation. Deleting a form deletes it.
Putting someone on a list can start that list's sequences, but only for someone who can be sent marketing email. See Automate emails with sequences.
