Process Automation

A single automation rule reacts to one event and fires one or more actions. Process automation is what happens when you string those rules together so an entire workflow — intake, qualification, referral, agreement, follow-up — runs end-to-end without your team driving each step manually.

Think of it as turning the playbook in your head ("when a PI lead comes in from Google Ads, we send a welcome SMS, schedule a call, and if they don't respond in 48 hours we follow up twice and then close them out") into something the system actually does for you.

What an end-to-end process looks like

Here's a realistic intake-to-referral workflow built from individual rules:

1. A new lead lands (form submission, manual entry, integration sync). Status = New.
2. Welcome SMS fires automatically acknowledging receipt and setting expectations.
3. Task is created on the intake coordinator's queue: "Qualify {{lead.name}} within 24 hours."
4. No reply after 24 hours? Follow-up email goes out, and the task moves to overdue.
5. Coordinator marks the lead Qualified. Status change triggers:
   • A fee-sharing agreement draft is generated.
   • The lead is flagged for the next auto-routing rule run.
6. Auto-routing sends the referral to the right partner based on case type and geography.
7. Partner accepts and retains. Status moves to Retained. A "thank you" email goes to the client and a confirmation goes to the partner.
8. No partner accepts after the cascade runs out? The lead drops to Manual Review with a task on the partner manager's queue.

That's six or seven separate rules wired together. Once it's set up, your team only touches the lead at the points that genuinely require human judgment.

How rules chain together

Process automation isn't a separate feature — it's an emergent property of how rules trigger one another:

• A rule's action ("set status to Qualified", "create a task", "send a referral") often becomes the trigger for the next rule.
• Status changes are the most common bridge between rules. Status changed to X is a trigger; change status to Y is an action.
• Time-delayed actions ("send a follow-up 48 hours after status changed to New") keep the chain moving without a human nudge.

You don't need to declare a "workflow" — just set up the rules and the chain runs itself.

Building a workflow

1. Map the playbook on paper first. What's the sequence of events for a typical lead in this category? What are the decision points? Where does the work currently sit waiting for a human?
2. Open Automations and create one rule per step.
3. For each rule, pick:
   • A trigger (new lead, status change, time elapsed, form submitted, referral accepted, etc.).
   • Conditions to scope it (case type, source, custom field — whatever keeps the rule from firing on the wrong leads).
   • Actions (email, SMS, task, status change, referral send, integration push).
4. Test in test mode against a sample lead. Fix any wording, timing, or condition issues.
5. Activate one rule at a time and watch the activity log for a few days before adding the next link in the chain.

Where each link lives

The whole workflow stitches these features together — process automation is just naming the pattern.

Visibility and audit

Every action in the chain is logged on the lead's activity timeline with timestamp, user (or "Automation"), and the rule that fired it. When a partner asks "why did this lead come to us?" or your firm asks "why didn't we ever follow up with that prospect?" the answer is one click away.

The Automations area also has a per-rule activity log so you can see exactly which leads each rule fired on, what actions ran, and whether anything failed.

Safety rails

• Pause any rule mid-chain without losing the configuration. Useful when something downstream (a vendor, a partner) has an outage and you don't want to keep generating dead activity.
• Test mode simulates the rule against a sample lead so you can preview the chain reaction before going live.
• Rate limits prevent a runaway rule from spamming the same lead multiple times — actions like "send SMS" respect a per-lead cooldown.
• Manual Review fallback catches anything the chain can't move forward, so leads never silently disappear.

Next steps

• Automations — the building blocks (triggers, conditions, actions) every chained workflow uses.
• Lead Statuses — the most common bridge between rules in a chain.
• Auto-Routing Rules — the referral half of most end-to-end intake workflows.