Creating an automation

Building an automation is five moves: pick a starting point, drag in the steps, configure each one, test, and turn it on. This page walks through all five.

1. Pick a starting point

Under Automations, click New automation. SquadOS asks how you want to begin:

• Start from scratch — a blank canvas. This is the route for anything that isn’t a follow-up.
• Follow-up for a stalled conversation — comes with the flow ready: it enters conversations that went quiet, sends three spaced-out messages and ends. You can change all of it afterwards.

Either way, the automation is born off and with a placeholder name (New automation #1). Click the name at the top of the editor to rename it.

2. Drag the steps onto the canvas

The canvas starts empty, and the only thing it accepts first is a trigger:

Steps come in by dragging from the left panel onto the canvas. While you drag, the canvas lights up the valid slots — drop into one of them. Dropping outside a slot cancels: nothing happens and the flow stays as it was.

Rather describe it than drag it?

The AgentMaker button in the top bar builds the flow from what you write — “when a customer goes 2 days without replying, send a message”. It proposes, you apply it to the canvas and carry on from here. See Building the automation with AgentMaker.

With the flow built, the editor looks like this:

Three things to notice:

• The icon rail on the left holds the three sections: Editor (the canvas), Settings (name, re-entry, activation) and Activity (the run history). It’s real navigation — reloading the page on “Activity” brings you back to “Activity”.
• Each step’s card summarizes what’s set: Idle for 23 hours, 2 days, the beginning of the message text. You read the whole flow without opening anything.
• Undo and redo work across the whole flow, with Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Shift+Z.

3. Configure each step

Click a step and the configuration panel opens on the right, split into bands you open and close. A closed band always summarizes what’s set — you don’t have to open them one by one to check.

Fields are written as sentences whenever possible: instead of an “Events” label with a list of checkboxes, you read “The automation starts when the conversation is resolved” and click the highlighted part to change it.

Details for each kind of step live in triggers, actions and rules.

4. Test before saving

The Test button runs the flow that’s in the editor right now, even if it was never saved. Sends are simulated; nothing reaches the customer. It’s how you check an edit before deciding to commit it.

The result of a test is the log: when it finishes, SquadOS takes you to Activity, where the timeline shows what each step received and returned. Details in Runs and tests.

5. Save and turn it on

Save creates a new version, and that’s the one that applies to future runs:

If anything blocks publishing — a trigger that leads nowhere, an incomplete step, a variable that doesn’t exist at that point in the flow — the dialog lists the problems and the matching steps light up on the canvas. Fix them and save again.

With a version saved, the switch at the top unlocks. Turn it on and the automation starts reacting for real.

The trigger only sees the saved version. Editing the canvas without saving doesn’t change what your contacts receive — it only changes what you see on screen.

If the browser closes mid-edit

The editor keeps a draft in your browser. When you come back, it tells you and lets you choose:

Restore brings the flow back as it was; Discard returns to the last saved version. The draft belongs to the browser — anyone opening the same automation on another machine sees the saved version.