Automations

What an automation is

An automation is a standing instruction: one sentence Eli follows on its own from then on, like "The morning after an appointment, text the customer a thank-you with your review link" or "Every Monday morning, email me last week's calls, bookings, and messages." There is no builder. Every automation is one of a short list of sentences with its blanks filled in, so it can only do what the sentence says.

The Automations tab of Settings has three parts, top to bottom, with Describe one to Eli at the top right:

• Your rules: the automations you turned on. Each is its sentence, a status line (On, Off, Waiting, or Paused, with what is happening in a few words), a switch, and a menu.
• Built in: what happens after every call, which comes with Dialhop: the email when Eli takes a message, the text reminders, calling you first when a caller needs you, where a booking lands, and where a caller who asks for a person is put through. The first three have a switch right there; the other two have a button to where they are set.
• Templates: the sentences to start from, under For your customers (texts) and For you (emails to you).

Every automation carries the same brakes. It sends at most a number of times a day that you set, and pauses itself past it. It reaches a customer at most once inside a window, so nobody gets two review asks for two visits in the same quarter. Before you turn one on, it tells you how often it would have gone out in the last 30 days. And every send, skip, or failure is in its Log.

Texts to customers go from your Dialhop number and count toward the plan's texts, like reminders and Eli's own texts. Until texting is set up on your number, a text automation waits: you can set it up, and it starts on its own once texting is ready.

Turn on an automation

1. Press Settings at the bottom of the sidebar, then the Automations tab.
2. Under Templates, find the sentence you want and press Use.
3. Fill in the blanks. A choice is a menu; Your review link is the web address where customers leave a review; The text is the message, which you can edit, with First name, Business, Service, and Review link dropped in from the Insert… menu or by typing them in braces. The sentence at the top reads back what you are setting.
4. Set At most, a day if you want a lower or higher cap.
5. Read the line under the fields: it says how many times the rule would have gone out in the last 30 days, with a few names as examples.
6. Press Turn on. The rule appears under Your rules and is on.

A customer who spoke Spanish on the phone gets the text in Spanish, and so on for other languages; you write it once.

Ask Eli to set one up

Press Describe one to Eli at the top of the tab, or open Eli anywhere, and tell it what you want in your own words: "text people a review link the day after their visit", "email me every Monday what happened last week". Eli shows a card with the sentence it will turn on and how often it would have gone out lately. Press Turn on on the card, or Not now. Eli only sets up what is on the list; for anything else it offers to pass the idea on to the Dialhop team.

Switch a built-in rule on or off

1. Under Built in, flip the switch on the rule: emailing you each message Eli takes, texting reminders before appointments (waits until texting is set up on your number), or calling you first when a caller needs you (needs a number under Put callers through to on the Receptionist tab).
2. The More menu on a row goes where the rest of the rule is set: Change the address for the message email, which opens a small form, and the Receptionist tab for the reminder times and the transfer number. The calendar rule's button opens Integrations.

Pause, edit, or delete an automation

1. Under Your rules, turn the switch off to pause a rule and on to resume it.
2. Press the More menu at the end of its row for Edit (change the blanks or the cap), Log (what it sent and skipped, newest first, with the reason when a text was skipped), or Delete, which removes the rule and its log.

When an automation pauses itself

A rule switches itself off when it hits its cap for the day, or when sending keeps failing. Its line under Your rules says which, and the bell on Overview shows An automation paused itself. Open its Log, then turn the switch back on when you have had a look.

Why a text was skipped

The Log says why a text did not go: texting was not yet set up on your number, the plan's texts were used up, the extra-usage limit on the Billing tab was reached, or there was no plan. Fix the cause and the rule carries on with the next occasion; it never goes back to send the ones it skipped.