To complete your automation setup, proceed from adding the obligatory "When" step and optional "Check if" step to defining the "Then" step, which is the final stage in the process.
Think of the "Then" step as responsible for achieving the desired outcome once all conditions are met.
For example, if you want to notify your team in Slack whenever a specific team member completes or opens a task on a project, the corresponding action ("Then" step) would be "Send a Slack message".
Note that you can add multiple actions ("Then" steps) to your automation rule!
Adding an Action to an Automation
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2) Select the "Then" option and select Next. |  |
3) Choose the desired action type (described below). |  |
4) Customize the action parameters as required (depending on the action). |  |
5) Save the action when you're finished, and your automation is ready to be saved and published.
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Action Types
There are several actions available for your automation. Let's explore each one:
Send Slack Message
Once triggered, the Automation will send a message to one of your Slack channels. For this to work, you need to set up the Slack integration first.
Send Email
This action allows you to send emails to any recipients informing them of work progress.
You can customize the email content and use it to notify individuals who do not receive Productive notifications.
Tip: if you want the email to be sent from a custom email address (other than the default noreply@outbox.productive.io), reach out to our Support team via chat and we'll guide you through setting up a custom sender email address. ☎️
Create Comment
This action allows you to create an automated comment on either a task, deal, budget or invoice.
Note that if your trigger is creating a task, the "Create comment" action can only add a comment to a task, and not on a budget, deal, or an invoice, meaning the action is trigger-specific.
Create Task
This action lets you create a new task. You can specify whether the new task will be visible to everyone or only to the task subscribers you define (note the padlock icon at the top 🔒).
For example, you can set up an automation to create a task in a different project (Project B) whenever a milestone in Project A is completed, ensuring that relevant team members across projects are kept informed and that tasks are completed efficiently.
Update Task
This action allows you to make changes to the selected task.
It becomes available when you've previously specified a task as a trigger (in the "When" step) or added a "Create Task" action in one of your previous steps.
Tip: using this functionality, you can automate updates for tasks across different projects.
Imagine a scenario illustrated in the screenshot below where you need to create a new task in a separate project when a milestone in the original project is closed.
In response, Productive can automatically update the description of the closed milestone to include details about the newly added task in the other project, complete with a link for easy navigation.
When setting up your automation, ensure you pay attention to the numerical values assigned to tasks, deals, budgets, and projects.
This attention to detail will help you accurately specify which tasks or projects should be included in the actions and conditions of your automation rules.
Attribute Mentioning
When defining the action, you can include some of the attributes from previous steps in the Slack, comment, or task message body, as well as the subject and body of an email.
You can find out more about attribute mentioning in Automations here.
