Automations

Flowforth automations help you automatically send emails based on activity in your Planning Center lists. You can use automations for welcome sequences, follow-ups, or any flow triggered by people joining or leaving a list — or on a recurring weekly or monthly schedule.

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How to Create an Automation

1. Go to Emails → Automations
   or visit https://flowforth.co/emails/automations
2. Click New Automation
3. Give your automation a name and description (for internal use only)

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Managing an Automation

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Rename or Edit Description

• Click the title at the top of the automation page
  or click the three dots (⋯) in the top right and choose Edit Name
• Make changes and click Save

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Delete an Automation

• Click the three dots (⋯) in the top right corner
• Choose Delete, then confirm
  If people are currently moving through the automation, their progress will be canceled.

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Triggers

Each automation starts with a trigger:

• Person is added to a list — runs when someone is added to a Planning Center list
• Person is removed from a list — runs when someone is removed from a Planning Center list
• At a specific time each week — runs once per week on a chosen day and time
• At a specific time each month — runs once per month on a chosen schedule

You must also select:

• The Planning Center list to monitor
• The email category for the emails being sent

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Monthly Schedule Options

When using the monthly trigger, you can choose between two scheduling patterns: Specific date (e.g., the 15th)

• Choose a day from 1–31, or select Last day of the month
• Example: “On the 12th at 9:00 AM every month”
• Example: “On the last day of the month at 5:00 PM”
• If the selected day doesn’t exist in a given month (e.g., the 31st in April), the automation will trigger on the last day of that month instead

Relative date (e.g., 2nd Thursday)

• Choose an occurrence (First, Second, Third, Fourth, or Last) and a day of the week
• Example: “Every 2nd Thursday at 10:00 AM”
• Example: “Last Friday of the month at 3:00 PM”

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Actions / Steps

You can add up to 10 steps in your automation and you can reorder them with the drag handles to the left of the step’s name.

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Wait

Delay the next step by a few hours or days.

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Send Email

Choose:

• An email template
• A subject line
• A from name and from email

The content for the email will be pulled from your selected email template.

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Steps must follow these rules:

• You cannot end an automation with a wait
• You cannot place two waits back-to-back
• You can wait a max of 31 days
• Weekly and monthly triggers are limited to a single email step (no wait steps)

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Activation and Updates

• An automation must have at least one email step to be enabled.
• Once active, Flowforth will monitor your chosen list and automatically trigger the automation for people added or removed.

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Editing an Active Automation

• You can edit your automation at any time.
• However, anyone currently in progress will be removed from the automation and will not finish the remaining steps.
• You can change the email templates used in the steps at any time without canceling current runs. People will receive the updated email content when they reach that step.

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Viewing Automation Progress

Click the People tab of your automation to view all participants. You’ll see:

• Each person who has entered the flow
• Their last completed step
• Their status (In Progress or Completed)

A person can only go through the automation once.

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Need help setting up or troubleshooting your automation?
Contact support@flowforth.co.