Building Your First Automation

This article walks you through building an automation from scratch in Noddle — from choosing a trigger to publishing it live.

Where to Find Automations

Go to Automations in the left menu. This is where all your automations live. You can see which are active, draft, or inactive.

Step 1: Create a New Automation

1. Click + Create Automation (or New Workflow).
2. Choose Start from Scratch to build your own, or Recipes to start from a pre-built template.
3. Give your automation a clear name (e.g., "New Lead - Form Submission Follow-Up").

Step 2: Add a Trigger

1. Click Add New Trigger.
2. Browse or search the trigger list and select the event you want to watch for.
3. Click your trigger to configure it — most triggers have filters that let you be more specific.
   • Example: Trigger = "Form Submitted" → Filter = "Only the Contact Us form"
4. Click Save Trigger.

💡 You can add multiple triggers to a single automation. Contacts that match any trigger will enter the flow.

Step 3: Add Actions

1. Click + Add Action below the trigger.
2. Select an action from the list.
3. Configure the action (e.g., write your SMS message, choose your email template).
4. Click Save Action.
5. Repeat to add more actions in sequence.

Common first actions to add:

• Send SMS (immediate follow-up)
• Send Email (welcome or confirmation)
• Add Tag (label the contact based on what triggered them)
• Assign to User (route to a team member)

Step 4: Add Wait Steps (Optional)

Between actions, you can insert a Wait step to create a delay.

• Wait 1 hour, then send a follow-up SMS
• Wait 1 day, then send a check-in email
• Wait until a specific time (e.g., next business day at 9am)

This prevents contacts from receiving five messages in five seconds.

Step 5: Test and Publish

1. Before going live, use a real test contact (not a dummy) to trigger the automation and verify it runs correctly.
2. Check the Execution Log inside the automation to see exactly what ran and when.
3. When everything looks right, toggle the automation to Published (Active).

⚠️ Re-entry setting: By default, a contact can only enter an automation once. If you're testing repeatedly with the same contact, enable "Allow Re-entry" in the automation settings, or delete and recreate the test contact.

Troubleshooting Tips

• Nothing fired? Check your trigger filters — they may be too restrictive.
• Actions skipped? Check if the contact already went through this automation (re-entry may be disabled).
• Wrong contacts entering? Add more specific filters to your trigger.
• Testing looks off? Use a live contact rather than the "Test Workflow" button, which has limitations.