Activating and Deactivating Automations

After you have built an automation, it will not begin running until you activate it. Since automations have the potential to automatically send things out to your contacts and matters, it is important to make sure you are familiar with your entry conditions for each particular automation before activating. This will help make sure that you do not accidentally trigger something to be sent incorrectly.

To activate an automation, click the toggle shown below.

All of the automations shown above are currently inactive. If they were active already, the toggle highlighted on the far right would appear green, and the status would say Active.

Once you click the toggle to activate an automation, you will see the following box appear:

It is very important to pause here and consider the options you have for activating this automation. As the warning message states, this automation will run immediately on 7 matters. This means that 7 matters currently meet the entry conditions for this automation, so if I click Activate, the automation will run on those 7 people. It will also run on any new matters who meet the entry conditions moving forward.

If I do not want the automation to trigger on those current matches, and I only want it to run on new matches that meet the entry conditions moving forward, then it is very important for to select the Future Matches Only Option. This will not run the automation on those 7 matters, and will only run for new matters meeting the entry conditions from that point forward.

For example, you may build an automation that triggers when an initial consultation is booked. Perhaps you want this automation to send an email containing the attorney's bio before the matter's consultation. If you build this automation and click activate, it will run on any matters who have an initial consultation booked, this includes consultations that have happened in the past. To avoid sending the automated email to folks who have already had their initial consultation, you would want to click the Future Matches Only option.

After you have activated an automation, you may decide you want to make some edits to the automation. To make edits, you will first need to deactivate the automation by clicking the same toggle used to activate it.

Any matters that are currently in the automation will simply pause wherever they are at in the workflow when you deactivate an automation. You can make any necessary edits, and then when you reactivate the automation they will simply resume exactly wherever they left off.

For example, if someone was in the middle of the time delay in the automation below when you deactivate the automation, when you reactivate they will simply remain in the delay until the specified amount of time has passed, then they would hit the Send Email action just like normal.

When you deactivate and then reactivate an automation, it will not restart the matters from the beginning of the workflow. 

If you make any edits to the automation while matters are currently running, when you reactivate the automation the edits will go into effect for any matters that have not yet hit the edited step yet. If the matter is already past the step(s) you edited, then they will simply continue through the automation.

It is also important to remember that targets will only trigger in each automation once, so if someone has already run through an automation, and then you deactivate and reactivate the automation, that target will not trigger again.

FAQ's

Can any of my staff activate and deactivate automations?

If you do not want your other Lawmatics users to have access to automations, you can remove their access to that feature. You will do this by going to settings > manage users > manage roles. Here you can customize different permission levels for your users and select which features they will have access to. If you remove the automation feature access, they will not be able to see the automation page whatsoever.

Will I be able to see when an automation has been activated/deactivated?

Yes, when an automation is deactivated you will see this reflected in the stats page for that automation. For any matters that are currently running in the automation, the system will log that the automation was Paused by a particular user. Once the automation is reactivated, it will log that the automation has been resumed. To find the stats page for an automation, go to the main automations page and click the small graph icon on the right side of the screen for that automation.

Will my client be aware that they are in automation or that the automation has been deactivated?

No, your matters and contacts will have no idea that they are receiving automated correspondence from you. On their end, it will seem like you are personally sending each item.