Getting Started with Kizen Automations

Purpose: Automations allow you to automate workflows and tasks such as activities, updating data records, and communications. Automations can be used to follow up with leads, remind customers and leads of other purchase opportunities, remind team members to take action, send customers happy birthday messages, and much more complex workflows!

We get it: When your brain is juggling multiple tasks and deadlines, it can be tricky to keep track and stay on top of everything. Automations allow you to streamline and automate your workflow, cutting out repetitive manual steps in your day-to-day work and therefore the risk of human error.

Whether you want to automatically receive and send reminders or organize and update records, Kizen’s Automations can help you prevent important tasks from falling through the cracks. Leave those repetitive steps to us so that you can focus on higher-level projects that actually require your brain power!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

What are Automations?
How can Automations help you optimize your workflow?
What are the components of an Automation?
How to add an Automation
How to edit an Automation
Automations Tips & Tricks
Additional Resources

What are Automations?

Automations are a powerful tool that allows you to automate the repetitive steps in your daily workflow, such as creating tasks, updating data records, sending communications, and more.

How can Automations help you optimize your workflow?

By building a seamless and efficient workflow, you can save your team precious time and money. Why be overwhelmed by manually managing the little things, when you can work smarter and faster?

The possibilities are truly endless, but some examples of Automations include:

Changing the status of a task or project
Sending emails
Following up with your leads
Reminding clients about purchase opportunities
Reminding team members, vendors, and contractors about tasks
Assigning team members

One use case may be a CRM workflow. Instead of having to manually copy, paste, and send a welcome email every time you find a new prospect, you can automate that! And you can even automatically schedule an Activity like a scheduled client meeting and assign that task to one of your sales team members without ever having to leave the platform.

See the image below for an example of how an automation can be created. Next, we'll dive into these components.

What are the components of an Automation?

The basic components of an Automation are a Trigger, Action, Condition, Goal, and Delay. You can also add Variables when building an Automation.

Trigger

A Trigger is what kicks off the Automation. You can either manually add a Trigger in the Automation builder, or you can start an automation directly on the record (in which case you do not need to add a Trigger step in the builder).

If you are adding a Trigger step in the builder, some common Triggers might be activities being logged, contacts being created, fields or tags being updated, emails being received, or even something as simple as when a date (such as your clients’ birthdays) arrives.

Action

An Action is the result from the Trigger. Some common Actions include updating records, sending communications, starting and stopping Automations, or notifying team members. For example, whenever a client’s birthday arrives, an automated birthday email with a 10% discount code gets sent to the client!

Condition

Conditions are optional criteria that you can set up to create “forks” in the path of an Automation workflow. You might choose the Condition to be whether or not the object is in a specific Group or if the fields are equal to a specific option. If the Condition criteria is met, the Automation will proceed down the "Yes" path; if the Condition criteria is not met, the Automation will proceed down the "No" path.

For example, perhaps you only want to send an email to “Canceled” clients advertising a promotional period. You can add the Condition that if a contact’s “Status” field equals “Canceled”, the Automation proceeds to send that email. Lucky them!

Goal

Like Triggers, Goals need to be met in order for the Automation to proceed. When you add a Goal, the Automation will wait until something happens and won't proceed until the Goal step is completed. Goals have similar options to Triggers, e.g. when an activity is logged, when a field is updated, etc., but they have two resulting states: Goal Met or Goal Not Met.

Note: If multiple criteria are needed, you can set up additional Goals.

Delay

Delays are steps in an Automation that allow you to control when the next step occurs. For example, a common Delay is waiting 24 hours after a contact has received an email with a call-to-action, before sending them a follow up email.

Variable

When you want to automatically add values to your fields, you can add Variables to your automation. Variable types can be boolean (yes/no), date, datetime, number, phone number, string, UUID (unique key to identify records), team member, or object record. Once you select a variable, you can use that value later in your automation, such as a “Change field” action. Variable names must be 3 characters long and must start with a letter.

How to add an Automation

Let’s go through how to add automations to your Kizen account, step-by-step.

Click on the “Automations” tab in the top menu bar at the upper right. This will bring you to the Automations page.
Then, click on the “New Automation” button in the upper right:
You’ll see a pop-up that will prompt you to create an Automation Name (Make sure to call your automation something unique, yet simple so that its purpose is clear, e.g. “New Client Follow-up,” “Contract Validation Workflow,” “Birthday email,” etc.):
Then choose the Automation Object from the dropdown menu. You can select the relevant object, whether it’s Contacts and any of your Custom Objects, for the Automation to run on. (For example, you would only want that “New Client Follow-up” automation to trigger for your Clients object.)
The next two fields in this pop-up — “Additional Error Notification Email” and “Folder” — are optional.
1. If the automation you created fails, you will receive a notification email by default, but you can also choose to add an Additional Error Notification Email recipient. Otherwise, you can leave this blank.
2. Once you add more automations, you may choose to organize them in Folders (for example, by different objects, different teams, or specific workflows). Otherwise, you can leave this blank.
Then, click "Save."
This will bring us to the actual Automation builder. First, in the Trigger step, click on “Click to add new trigger”
Under “Choose Trigger,” select the event that you would like to automatically start the automation.
Then, complete the Trigger Settings (the available options will differ based on the trigger you have chosen).
Don’t forget to click on “Save.”
Next, you’re going to see the option to “Initialize Variables.” This is where you can define variables to fill in fields that you would like to fill later in the automation — but this is totally optional!
Click on the “+” button or click and drag to add an Action (and if you’d like, Conditions, Delays, and Goals as well).
When the automation is complete, click on the Save button in the upper right corner, and when you’re ready for the automation to run, toggle the “Active?” button on.

How to edit an Automation

Need to edit an Automation after saving it? No problem!

First, navigate to the Automations page by clicking on the “Automations” tab in the top menu bar at the upper right.
Then, use the search bar or scroll to find the Automation you would like to edit.
Click on the Automation Name. This will bring you to the Automation builder.
From there, you can make the following changes:
1. To edit an existing Automation step, click on the “...” icon next to the relevant step > Edit and make the necessary changes. Don’t forget to click “Save”!
2. To delete an existing Automation step, click on the “...” icon next to the relevant step > Delete.
3. To reorder existing Automation steps, hover over the left-hand side on the step you would like to move, and a drag and drop icon should appear. Drag and drop the step to the new location in the automation.
4. To add a new Automation step, click the + icon or drag & drop Actions, Conditions, Delays, and/or Goals.
5. It’s important to note that adding a step to an Automation only applies to future objects for that Automation, except in these scenarios: Objects currently on a Delay step will start the new steps if the new step is placed after the Delay. Objects currently waiting on a Goal step will start new steps if the new step is placed after the Goal.
6. Click “Save” in the upper right corner.

What's an example of an Automation?

Now that you’ve got the basics, let’s dive into a specific use case so you can see just how cool Automations are!

Let’s say we’re a bakery that needs to process custom cake orders.

First, our customers fill out a form with their details:
Once the form is submitted, this Triggers an Automation:
We’ve added an Action that sends a customized email to the client, confirming that we’ve received their order:
Then, the Automation will Assign the Team Member as the bakery manager.
We’ve also added a Goal that the assigned Bakery Manager must review the order and update the “Priority” field, which will then schedule the “Order Processing” Activity, and notify the Pastry Chef by text if it’s an Urgent request, or by email if it’s a lower priority request.

No matter what your use case, you can absolutely apply these concepts and get even more creative as you build your own Automations workflow!

Automations Tips & Tricks

We absolutely encourage you to experiment and build an Automation workflow that accomplishes your business goals, but it’s important to prevent confusion when setting up complex workflows.

Think of Kizen’s user-friendly Automation modules like a flow chart; anytime you edit or add a new step, make sure to go back to the beginning and review the entire Automation workflow so that there aren’t any redundant or missing steps.
If there are multiple people working within your account, we recommend taking advantage of specifying Permissions so that unauthorized team members are unable to edit existing or add new Automations.
Take advantage of the “Additional Description” box in every component so that you and your team understand what exactly each step is for and why it exists!

Feel free to check out our Knowledge Base or reach out to support@kizen.com with any questions!

Additional Resources:

Summary: Automations streamline workflows, saving time and ensuring consistency in workflows. Automation features simplify and enhance customer relationship management by providing highly customizable workflows, allowing businesses to nurture leads, manage contacts, and personalize customer interactions efficiently. Use automations to save time, improve engagement and team collaboration, and enhance customer satisfaction.