Automations

What This Does

You’ll automate routine community tasks, personalize the member experience, and deepen engagement through custom workflows. Automations streamline your community management by automatically responding to member actions, saving you time, and creating impactful interactions.

What To Know First

  • Admin access required

How to Create an Automation

  1. Navigate to the Admin area and select Automations from the main menu.
  2. Click + Automation.
  3. Choose a templated automation or create a custom rule.
  4. Enter a descriptive name for easy reference.
  5. Select a trigger based on community activities:
    • Community:
      • Member joins community
      • Member leaves community
      • Member onboarding completed
    • Product:
      • Member joins product
      • Member leaves product
      • Member completes product
      • Member completes module
      • Member has not completed module
      • Member is inactive
      • Product start date
      • Product end date
    • Member:
      • Member joins group
      • Member leaves group
      • Profile fields completed or updated
    • Event:
      • Member confirms attendance to event
      • Member joins virtual event
    • Pathways:
      • Member joins pathway
      • Member leaves pathway
      • Member completes pathway
  6. Specify trigger details, such as Product, Group, Event, or Profile Field.
  7. Choose an action in response:
    • Manage Flow:
      • Conditional Branch
      • Delay before continuing
    • Message:
      • Send email
      • Disco direct message
      • Disco channel message
      • Slack direct message
      • Add to Slack channel
      • Remove from Slack channel
    • Product:
      • Add to or Remove from product
    • Member:
      • Add to or Remove from Group
  8. Provide action details, like message content or Group/Product specifics.
  9. Review the setup and Save as Draft.
  10. Click Activate when ready.

That's it! You're ready to go.

How to Deactivate an Automation

From table:

  1. Locate the automation
  2. Click the 3 dot icon
  3. Select Deactivate 

From automation settings 

  1. Navigate to the automation’s settings
  2. Click the three-dot icon in the top right or the dropdown in the Save button at the bottom.
  3. Select Deactivate 

You can always reactivate an automation later.

 

Example automations

Automations can support many parts of your community. You can:

  • Welcome and guide new members
  • Organize members into the right groups and products
  • Encourage progress and engagement throughout programs
  • Re-engage members who have become inactive

These workflows keep your community running smoothly and your members connected without extra manual work. You can start quickly with built-in templates like these:

Phased onboarding: Send a series of emails and check-ins after onboarding.

  • Trigger: Member completes onboarding  
  • Action: Send email → Delay → Send email → Delay → Send email

Group members: Auto-add members into groups based on profile fields.

  • Trigger: Member updates a profile field to (Role: Manager) 
  • Action: Add to group (Leadership Division)

Add to product: Enroll members into a product automatically when they finish onboarding.

  • Trigger: Member completes onboarding
  • Action: Add to product (Data Privacy and Security Training)

Course progress nudges: Tailor emails based on completion levels as a product end date approaches.

  • Trigger: Before product end date
  • Conditional branch: Low completion (0–33%)
  • Action: Send email

Inactive nudge: Re-engage members who haven’t been active.

  • Trigger: Member inactive for 2 weeks
  • Action: Send email

 

Common Questions

Can I set up multiple actions for one trigger?
Yes, multiple actions let you create comprehensive workflows.


How should I manage Automations that may overlap?
Design clear Automations with specific objectives, and regularly review them to prevent conflicts.


 Can I customize who an automation is sent from?
Email automations come from the Community, not individual Admins, and can't be customized. Direct message automations can be customized by selecting an alternative Admin from the Send As dropdown.


What does the 'Add to Product' action do?
The Add to Product action immediately registers a member into a Learning Product, bypassing paywalls and Product Applications.

What does the 'Member joins community' trigger mean?
The Member joins community trigger activates when a member creates an account and enters your community for the first time.

What does the 'Member onboarding completed' trigger mean?
The Member onboarding completed trigger activates when a member has finished all required onboarding steps set up in your community.

What does the 'Product Member is Inactive' trigger mean?
The Inactive trigger triggers after the period of time the user has been inactive, but then we never trigger it again until after they have been active again.

For example:

  • Upon publishing the automation it will send out an email to all users who had been inactive for over a week
  • From then on, it will send an email to anyone who has been inactive for over a week who has not already received an email since their last activity.