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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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Automation Settings

Click the Settings tab on any automation to manage its configuration. Changes are saved automatically.
  • Name — rename the automation
  • Description — update the internal description
  • Allow Repeat — control whether people can go through the automation more than once (see Allow Repeat below)

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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
You must set all three: trigger type, list, and category for the automation to be enabled.

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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”
For weekly and monthly triggers, the time is based on the timezone detected from your browser when you save the automation.

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Actions / Steps

Your automation is built on a visual canvas: the trigger sits at the top, followed by each step in order, with an Add step button at the bottom.
  • Add a step — click Add step at the bottom of the canvas, or the + button on the line between two steps to insert one in between. You can add up to 100 steps.
  • Edit a step — click a step to open its settings panel.
  • Reorder or remove a step — open the step and use the up/down arrows in the panel header to move it, or the trash icon to delete it.

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Wait

Delay the next step by a few hours or days.
Because Planning Center lists auto-refresh at 2:00am, we recommend adding a wait before sending your first email when using auto-refreshing lists.

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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.
Emails sent through automations count toward your send limit.

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Send Church Center Notification

Send a push notification to people who have the Church Center app as part of your automation. This is a great way to reach people who may not check their email regularly but are active in Church Center. Fill in:
  • Title — the headline of the notification (up to 100 characters)
  • Body — what you’d like to notify people about
  • Auto-dismiss after — how long the notification stays before it’s automatically marked as read: 1 week, 2 weeks, or 1 month
  • Link (optional) — a link to open from the notification. It must start with http:// or https://
  • Link text (optional) — the label for your link. This is only available once you’ve added a link
How the notification is sent depends on your trigger:
  • List-based triggers (added to / removed from a list) send the notification to the people entering the automation
  • Weekly and monthly triggers send the notification once to the whole list
Your organization needs a connected Planning Center account to send Church Center notifications. You can also send a Church Center announcement when you send an individual email — see Church Center Announcements.

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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 and a single Church Center notification 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.
People must meet the trigger condition while the automation is active to be processed. If it was inactive, they won’t be added retroactively.

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Editing an Active Automation

  • You can edit your automation at any time.
  • Anyone currently in progress will continue running through the automation using the previous steps. You also have the option to cancel in-progress runs when saving your changes.
  • Email template content is fetched at send time, so if you edit a template used in an active automation, people will receive the updated content when they reach that step.

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Running an Automation Manually

Sometimes you want to start an automation right away instead of waiting for its trigger. From an automation, click Run now to open the run dialog. You can start the automation two ways:
  • Run for current list members — fetches everyone currently on the automation’s Planning Center list and runs the automation for them. Because this can affect everyone on the list, you’ll be asked to confirm before it runs. This is only available when the automation is tied to a list.
  • Run for specific people — search for and select one or more people, then run the automation just for them.
Anyone you run manually goes through all of the automation’s steps, exactly as they would on a normal trigger. Manual runs still respect the automation’s Allow Repeat setting. If repeats are off, anyone who has already completed the automation won’t be started again — only people who haven’t been through it (and aren’t currently in progress) will run. If repeats are on, people are re-enrolled. This means running manually is safe even if some people have already been through the flow.
You can run an automation manually even while it’s disabled. We’ll let you know it won’t fire on its trigger until you enable it, but you can still run it for the people you choose.

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Allow Repeat

The Allow Repeat setting controls whether people can go through the automation more than once.
  • Weekly and monthly triggers default to allowing repeats — people are re-enrolled each time the automation runs.
  • List-based triggers (added to/removed from a list) default to not allowing repeats — each person goes through the automation once.
You can override this default per-automation in the Settings tab.
When repeat is enabled for recurring automations, people whose most recent run was canceled will not be re-enrolled automatically.

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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 (click their name to go to their person detail page)
  • Their last completed step
  • Their status (In Progress, Completed, or Canceled)

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Canceling a Person’s Run

You can manually cancel an individual person’s automation run from the People tab. Click the Cancel button next to a person who is currently in progress. They will stop receiving any remaining steps. If you cancel someone by mistake, click Undo to restore their run.
After refreshing your list, allow a few minutes for Flowforth to sync and begin processing people into the automation.

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Automations on the Person Detail Page

You can also view a person’s automation history from their detail page under the Automations tab. This shows:
  • Every automation they’ve been enrolled in
  • Their last completed step
  • Their current status
  • When they were enrolled
The Emails Received tab on the person detail page also includes emails sent through automations. You can filter the table to show only regular emails, only automation emails, or both.
Need help setting up or troubleshooting your automation?
Contact support@flowforth.co.