Workflow & Automation Builder

The Workflow & Automation Builder lets you turn "when X happens, do Y" into a rule — no code. Each rule is a trigger, optional conditions, and one or more actions, and every run is logged so you can see what fired and why.

In this section #

Detailed guides for everything covered here:

• Automation Rules — A saved "when this happens, do that" workflow — a trigger that watches for an event, optional conditions that must pass, and one or more actions that fire automatically.
• Approval Requests — Approval requests are the human gate inside your automation rules — a pending record that blocks an entity until a user approves or rejects it.

Triggers #

A trigger is the event that starts a rule. They come in three flavors:

Event-driven — fire the moment something happens:

• Sales order created
• Purchase order created
• Work order status changed
• Opportunity stage changed

Condition-based (evaluated on a schedule) — fire when something is in a state that needs attention:

• Low stock (projected to run out within its lead time — see reorder suggestions)
• Overdue equipment checkout
• Overdue rental
• Overdue work order
• Invoice overdue
• Invoice unpaid for N days

Time-based — fire on a cadence: daily, weekly, or monthly.

Conditions #

Conditions narrow which events actually run the rule — for example, only sales orders above a value threshold, or only a specific opportunity stage. If the conditions don't match, the rule is skipped (and that's recorded in the log).

Actions #

When a rule fires, it runs its actions:

• Send email — templated with {{placeholders}} from the event.
• Send SMS — via your Twilio connection.
• Notify users — email notifications to chosen users.
• Create task — a follow-up task with assignee, priority, and due date.
• Create purchase order — draft a PO automatically.
• Call webhook — POST the event to an external URL.
• Require approval — pause the action until a person approves or rejects it.

Approvals #

The Require approval action turns a rule into a gate. For example, a rule on purchase-order submission can hold the PO until an approver signs off — submission is blocked until then. Pending items show up as approval requests, which can be approved or rejected (including over the API).

Scheduled runs #

The condition-based and time-based triggers are evaluated by a scheduled command (automation:run-scheduled) that runs daily. It checks for overdue checkouts, overdue invoices, unpaid-for-N-days invoices, overdue work orders, overdue rentals, and low-stock items, and fires any daily/weekly/monthly rules due that day.

Execution log #

Every rule keeps an execution log — each run is recorded as pending → success / failed / skipped, with the context it saw and the result. When a rule isn't doing what you expect, the log tells you whether it fired, matched, and what happened.

Doing it from the API #

# List automation rules
curl "https://your-domain.com/api/v1/automation/rules" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"