Automations: when this happens, do that

An automation runs the same steps every time something happens: when a membership is about to end, if it matches your conditions, then do the steps. Automations are free to run and predictable.

In SmartDuke, automations and AI agents live in one place: Duke's work (in the menu, often under Duke). There are two kinds:

• Fixed steps: an automation. The same steps run every time.
• Duke decides: an AI agent. You describe the job and Duke works out what to do each time. See AI agents.

Start from a ready-made automation

When your business was set up, SmartDuke added a few automations for your type of business, switched off, for you to check first. They're under Ready to switch on: check them first.

Open one, check the steps, change what you like and click Switch on. More are under Ideas for your business → See all ready-made jobs.

Build your own

1. Open Duke's work and click Give Duke work.
2. Choose Use fixed steps.
3. Give it a Name.
4. Under When, choose the Trigger (see the list below). Some triggers have a setting, such as how many days before.
5. Under Only if, add conditions if you want to narrow it down, for example “Value is more than 10,000”. All of them must match. Comparisons: is, is not, contains, is more than, is less than, is filled in, is empty.
6. Under Then, add the steps in order:
   • Do something: choose an action, such as emailing a customer, sending a WhatsApp template, scheduling a task, moving a lead or creating an invoice.
   • Write with AI: tell Duke what to write (for example a personal renewal reminder). His draft can be used in the next step. This uses AI credits.
   • Wait: wait from 1 hour to 90 days before carrying on.
7. Click Save and switch on, or Save as draft to finish later.

Use Insert field in any text to add details that are filled in for each record, like the customer's name or your business name.

Triggers you can use

• Contacts and leads: A contact is added · A lead is added · A lead moves to another stage · A lead is won · A lead is lost
• Memberships: A membership is sold · renewed · cancelled · A membership is about to end
• Attendance: A member stops coming
• Bookings: A class is booked · Someone misses a class · An appointment is booked · An appointment is done · Someone misses an appointment · An appointment is coming up
• Invoicing: An invoice is issued · An invoice is paid in full · An invoice is coming due · An invoice is overdue
• Your own pages: A record is added to a page · A record on a page is changed · A record moves to another stage · A date on a record is coming up · A date on a record has passed

You only see triggers for apps that are switched on and records your role can see. Date-based triggers are checked once a day, and each record starts them once.

Approvals

Each Do something step has Ask me before doing this, on by default. When it's on, the step waits in your approvals until you approve it. Steps that send text Duke wrote always need approval, so a person reads it before it goes out.

Approvals appear under Waiting for you on Duke's work, grouped per automation, for example “Send 5 messages”.

Click Approve (or Send all) or Reject. An approval expires after 3 days, and then nothing is done.

Runs

Open an automation to see its Runs: each record it ran for, with the status Running, Waiting, Done, Failed or Stopped. Open a run to see each step, and click Stop run to stop the steps left.

Change, switch off or delete

• Edit saves a new version. Runs already going keep the version they started with.
• Switch off stops new runs; runs already going carry on.
• Delete is only possible for an automation that has never run. Switch the others off instead.

Good to know

• Your plan may limit how many automations can be switched on at once.
• Imports never start automations, and changes made by automations don't start other automations, so they can't loop.