Plan requirement
| Subscription | Any plan |
| Access | Admin |
An automation runs because time has passed, not because something changed. That single difference explains most of its behaviour.
The difference from a trigger
| Trigger | Automation | |
|---|---|---|
| Runs | On create and on every update | Once an hour, on its own |
| Because | Something changed | Time passed |
| Typical use | Notify, route, categorise | Chase, escalate, close |
What it is for
- Closing solved tickets after a period.
- Chasing a customer who has not answered.
- Escalating something that has sat too long.
- Reminding an agent about a ticket on hold for a week.
All of those are about nothing happening, which is exactly what a trigger cannot detect.
Once an hour, not immediately
Automations run on a schedule. A rule that fires after 24 hours fires at some point in the hour after that, not at the moment the clock ticks over. That is fine for chasing and closing; it is not a timer.
The rule that catches everyone
An automation must change something that stops it matching. Otherwise it fires every hour, forever, on the same ticket, and your customer gets a reminder every hour.
Adding a tag as part of the action, and requiring the absence of that tag as a condition, is the standard way to make it run once.
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