Automation Troubleshooting

As you get more comfortable using automations, you will hopefully be able to establish a "set it and forget it" mindset for your workflows, meaning that you will not need to frequently monitor or troubleshoot them. They will be a well-oiled machine running in the background.

However, as you are getting familiar with automations, you may occasionally want to keep half an eye on your automations to make sure that everything is running properly. You may also occasionally need to troubleshoot when you see that an automation has not fired as you expected.

Below you will see a list of common automation questions/issues, along with the troubleshooting steps for each issue.

1. An automation that you were expecting to trigger on a particular matter did not trigger
   1. Remember that automations can take 30 seconds to a minute to fire, so give it about a minute before you begin troubleshooting
   2. Check that the matter does in fact meet the entry conditions for the automation
   3. Next, check that the matter is the proper status for the automation. When you view the automation you will see the Eligible Statuses listed at the top of the page. If the matter in question does not match the status(es) for the automation, they will not trigger. To fix, either edit the automation to include the status of the matter, or edit the matter to match one of the eligible statuses, whichever is applicable for the situation.
   4. If both of those things check out, then verify that this matter has not run through that particular automation before. Remember that each matter can only trigger into each automation once, so if they have already run then they will not trigger again. You can easily check this by going to the matter's timeline and filtering it to only show automations, then look for the particular automation.
2. An automation triggered, but it is showing a Failed status
   1. If an automation has failed, you first step is to click the eyeball icon to expand the details of the failure, shown below. This will give you a clue as to why the automation failed.
   2. There are a number of reasons why an automation might fail. It could be because the automation is trying to send a text message or email and the matter does not have a phone number or email address entered (respectively).
   3. In the example above, your next step would be to add the person's phone number into their matter details to correct the failure. Once you have done that, you can choose to restart the automation from the very beginning, or retry the automation from the failed step.
3. A matter triggered in an automation that I do not believe they should have triggered in
   1. Lawmatics automations are very reliable, as a general rule it is safe to assume that a matter will not trigger in an automation unless they have met the entry conditions. Sometimes you simply may not have realized that a matter met the entry conditions.
   2. First, take a look at the matter's activity timeline, usually you'll want to look for activities that were logged just before the automation triggered. In the example below, we see that the matter's status was changed to Hired, and then immediately after this status change, an automation ran. This is a clue that the status changing to Hired is what triggered the automation
   3. If you can't find anything on the matter's timeline to indicate what triggered the automation, then perhaps the automation was newly activated. Remember that when an automation is activated, you will have the option to run it on current matches, or future matches only. In this scenario, it is possible that the timeline log of the matter meeting the entry conditions will be far down on the timeline, but the reason this matter newly triggered into the automation is because it was newly activated.
4. A matter meets the exit conditions for the automation, but they have not exited
   1. Verify that the matter has in fact met the entry condition. For example, you may think that your exit condition is when the matter moves to a certain pipeline stage, but it might actually be once they submit a certain form. Verify that the actual exit condition has been met.
   2. Once you have verified this, then check the current status of the automation. If the matter is in a Delayed status, meaning they are within a time delay, then will not immediately exit the automation despite the exit condition being met. Rather, they will exit once the delay is complete.
   3. Essentially, the exit conditions are checked before each action item in the automation runs. So in the scenario described above, after the time delay is complete the exit conditions will be checked, if they are met, then the matter exits before the next action can fire. As long as the matter still meets the exit conditions once the time delay is complete, they will exit.
5. My automation shows a Delayed status
   1. This is actually a healthy automation status, and does not indicate an issue. This simply means that the matter is within a time delay in the automation, so they are between steps in the workflow.
   2. If you wish to skip the time delay, click the button highlighted below to skip the delay and advance the matter to the next step in the automation.

FAQ's

I have tried all of the steps listed above and I still can't get to the bottom of my issue, what should I do?

Email our support team at support@lawmatics.com and we will be happy to help investigate further.