Automations

Automations runs multi-step email journeys for you. Rather than sending one message to a whole list at one moment, you draw a workflow — a trigger followed by a sequence of actions — and each contact travels through it independently.

A welcome series, a birthday greeting, a re-engagement journey that only chases the people who didn't open, a hand-off that copies engaged contacts onto a "warm leads" list — these are all automations.

How it works

Every automation has exactly two kinds of building block.

One trigger. The event that enrols a contact into the workflow — a contact being added to a list, a contact opening an email, a date arriving. An automation has exactly one trigger, and it sits at the top of the canvas.

Any number of actions. What happens to a contact once enrolled — send them an email, wait three days, copy them to another list, notify your admin, or evaluate a condition and take one of two paths.

You assemble these on a visual canvas by clicking the + below the last node and choosing the next step. The result is a tree that reads top to bottom.

Trigger: Contact is added to a list
    │
    ├── Send an email  ("Welcome")
    │
    ├── Wait  (3 days)
    │
    └── Condition: opened the previous email?
            ├── Yes → Send an email ("Here's what's next")
            └── No  → Send an email ("Did you miss this?")

Each contact moves at their own pace

This is the single most important idea in Automations, and it is what separates it from a broadcast.

A contact who enrols on Monday and a contact who enrols on Friday are each at their own position in the workflow. When a Wait step says three days, it means three days from that contact's arrival at that step — not three days from when you built the automation, and not a fixed calendar date shared by everyone.

Contacts sitting inside a Wait step, or waiting for a Condition to resolve, are held in the waiting pool. A background job checks the pool on a schedule and releases each contact the moment their time is up. This is why Automations needs a working scheduler — see Setup.

How it compares to the rest of Mumara

Feature	What it does	Reach for it when
Broadcast	One message, sent once to a list or segment.	You have something to say now, to everyone.
Drip group	A fixed sequence of emails on a fixed schedule after subscription.	The sequence is the same for everyone and never branches.
Evergreen	A campaign that recurs on a schedule.	You want the same send to repeat over time.
Automation	A branching, multi-step journey driven by an event and by behaviour.	The journey has more than one step, needs to wait, or needs to react to what the contact did.

The clearest signal that you want an Automation rather than a drip is branching: if you ever want to say "send this only to the people who didn't click", you need a condition, and conditions live in Automations.

Concepts and vocabulary

Term	Meaning
Automation	One complete workflow — a trigger plus its actions. Listed under Automations.
Trigger / Event	The single entry point that enrols a contact.
Action	A step performed on an enrolled contact.
Node	Any single block on the canvas, trigger or action.
Leaf node	The last node on a branch. New actions can only be added at a leaf.
Waiting pool	Where contacts are held while a Wait or Condition step counts down.
Action label	The name you give a step, used on the canvas and in statistics.
Running / Paused	An automation's status. Only a Running automation enrols and advances contacts.

What you need before you start

• The Automations addon installed and active.
• Automation Status switched on under Application Settings → Triggers.
• The application's queue driver set to Database, and a queue worker running.
• The scheduler (cron) running, which drives the waiting pool.
• At least one contact list and one active sending node if you plan to send email.

Setup & Initial Configuration walks through every one of these.

Where to find it

Automations appears in the main menu as Automations, with a second entry, Automations Stats, for reporting. The list page shows every automation with its list, event type, last update, status, and links to its statistics and actions.

Next steps

• Setup & Initial Configuration — turn it on and configure it correctly.
• Triggers — the five events that can start an automation.
• Actions — every action, field by field.
• Building Automations — the canvas, templates, import and export.
• Worked Example — build a welcome journey with a re-engagement branch.
• Statistics — measure what your automations are doing.
• Troubleshooting — when an automation isn't running.