Automations in Motion.io

From the moment a client is ready to sign, through feedback and delivery, to final approval and launch, Motion.io's built-in automations help eliminate manual tasks and streamline client and team collaboration in your projects.

This article will explain how Motion.io's built-in automations work and provide instructions for creating them in your projects and templates.

How Automations Work

Motion.io's built-in automations enable you to specify an action (or actions) that automatically take place when other events (called "triggers") occur in one of your projects or templates. Whether you create automations in active projects or templates, the process is virtually identical.

How to Create Automations

To create automations in a project template, open the editor and click "Automations" in the top navigation bar. On this page, you can create new automations and view any existing automations you or your team members added.

To create an automation, click the "Add new" button to bring up the automation builder. The instructions below will walk you through each step of creating your first automation.

Step 1: Configure Trigger Event(s)

The first step to create an automation is specifying at least one "Trigger" event. Triggers are events that occur in a Motion.io project or portal that cause an automation workflow to run. To configure trigger events, you must specify:

• Whether the trigger should apply to a task, stage, form block, or project
• The specific task, stage, or form block you want the trigger to reference
• A condition that must be met in the task, stage, or form block you referenced for the trigger to fire (for example, a specific task/stage being completed, activated, or archived)

In cases where you'd like automation to run only after all of the conditions in a set of events are met, Motion.io gives you the ability to do so. When adding additional steps to a trigger, each event you specify must occur before the automation runs.

Step 2: Add a Delay (Optional)

While optional, adding delays to your automation workflows can be especially useful for projects that have a defined timeline, as delays enable you to do things like:

• Activate a task for clients to schedule a check-in call after they have worked with you for X weeks
• Archive completed tasks or stages after Y days to hide them from your client's view in their portal
• Give your team Z hours to edit or customize portal pages before clients can access them

By default, Motion.io sets the "Delay" field in new automations to "None." To add a delay, choose a number and specify the unit for that delay (hours, days, weeks, or months) with the corresponding dropdowns.

Step 3: Add Automation Action(s)

The last step before you can save an automation is to add an action. "Actions" are what you want Motion.io to do automatically in a project once your trigger event occurs.

The dropdown list on the left side of the "Actions" modal allows you to choose different automated actions for email notifications, tasks, stages, and portal pages.

Depending on the action you select, Motion.io will prompt you to specify additional details related to that action (for example, the name of a task/stage you'd like to import or the email address you'd like to send a notification to) before you can save.