Automations: conditions
A crucial aspect of creating automations is which conditions to include. Conditions are filters that a trigger action must meet in order to fire.
Passive vs. active conditions
Automation conditions can be divided into two groups: passive and active.
- Passive conditions don’t imply an action has taken place. For example, the condition “Deal creator is me” is passive, since the deal doesn’t need to change to be true.
- Active conditions require an action to have taken place. For example, “Person label has changed to cold”, means someone has changed the label to cold.
This distinction is especially important for automation troubleshooting. If an automation you’ve created is not working, ask the following questions:
What action should trigger this automation?
Does the condition I’m using match the action I’m performing?
Does my automation have an action step at all?
The third question is vital since no automation can be triggered without performing an action.
Common conditions
While some conditions are straightforward, others might seem vague at first glance. Here are some common automation terms and their significance.
Has changed to | Active | When an item is updated by changing the value of a field to a specific value | “Deal stage has changed to proposal” |
Has changed | Active | When an item is updated by changing the value of a field to any other value | “Deal stage has changed.” |
Is | Passive | When an item created/updated contains a specific field value. Unlike has changed to, is requires an additional condition if used for an update. | “Deal stage is proposal” and “Deal owner has changed” |
Contains | Passive | When a text-based field contains certain words or phrases | “Person name contains business” |
Is not empty | Passive | When a specified field contains any value | “Organization address is not empty.” |
Owner/assigned to user is | Passive | When a specific user has been assigned an item (deal/contact/activity) | “Activity assigned to user is user A” |
Creator is | Passive | This is an important distinction from owner is. The creator is the person who created the said item whereas the owner can be changed. | “Organization creator is user B” |
Filter matches | Active | When an item falls within the parameters of a specified filter. | “Person filter matches person label is cold” |
Deal stage changes
If you want to trigger an automation based on a change in deal stage, use the deal stage has changed to or deal stage has changed condition, depending on whether you want to specify a stage.
You can also use the deal stage is condition, but it requires an additional condition since it’s passive on its own.
In the example, a deal must be in the “Lead In” stage when the label is changed to “Hot Lead” in order to trigger the ownership change.
Person matches filter
Since entering a filter’s results constitutes an action, you can trigger it with automations. However, you can’t use automations on existing items within the filter results.
For example, you can’t change the label of every person within a filter’s results by choosing the filter as an automation condition. Instead, you can use bulk edit to fit people to the filter requirements.
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