Creating Rules

This article will explain how to create and customize rules in Amity. Read the basics about rules here.

This article covers the following sections:

• Add a rule
• Limit repeated actions ("recurrence")
• Fallback field
• Pro Tips 

Add a rule

To add a rule, follow the instructions below:

1. Navigate to the Settings app.
2. Click on Rules under the Automation heading.
3. Click on the grey plus button in the top right to bring up the Rule Editor page.
4. Fill out the required fields and click Create.

 

Limit repeated actions ("recurrence")

With recurrence, you can restrain how often a rule's actions will occur.

For example, if you set a trigger under Conditions that says: "When an account health changes in any direction" and choose the type of Action to be "add a play", you wouldn't want to add a new play created every time an account's health changes.

When making a rule to create a play, task, email a team member or email a customer, ensure: 

• The rule is triggered by a unique event, like 'Account is created' or 'Account is assigned'.

OR

• The rule has a recurrence day; click the checkbox in this section and select the number of days based on however long it will take for your conditions to clear out.

If your 'Renewing Soon' insight activates at 90 days, and you are triggering it to create a Play, set the recurrence value to 90 days.

See the screenshot below for the example.

 

Fallback field

Some action types that can be selected in the Rule Editor are associated with an account assignee. These include:

• Add a play
• Add a task
• Email customers
• Send an alert

For example, you can create a rule to add a play to a playbook when an account is created. If that account has no assignee, you can select an assignee from the Fallback field to take leadership of it.

 

Pro Tips

Here are tips to help you get more out of rules.  

Efficiency

When using a rule to update an account property, set it up so the rule doesn't trigger if your desired state is already present.

For example, if you want to set Type = X when certain conditions are in place, have the rule trigger ONLY when those conditions are true, AND Type does not equal X.

 

Time-boxing

Think of 'Less than' as before, and 'Greater than' as after.

For example, if you want to pay attention to accounts less than 7 days old, the conditions would look like: 

Time-boxing is a way to constrain a rule so that it can only possibly trigger within a given time frame.

For example, you want to create an onboarding play but only after the new account has been assigned. You would trigger the rule on 'Account is assigned', but only for new accounts. You would add the condition:

and set the recurrence so that it doesn't repeat for 7 days. 

 

Or, if you want to send an email to the customer 30 days before renewal:

AND

This will only be true for one day, so set the recurrence to 7 days (just in case!).

 

Warnings before triggering emails to customers

There are two important things to remember before you trigger your emails to customers:

1. Make sure the email won't repeat
2. Test your triggers  

Always ensure your recurrence is set. If possible, have the trigger be once-only: either a manually set tag that the rule removes, a single event that won't repeat, or time-boxed.

When testing your triggers and if you feel comfortable with the email content, use the Send Test Email button. This will never send an email to your customer, it will send it to you as if you were the customer. 

To check which customers will receive the email, you can create a view to place them in.

Note: the email will not be sent if there are no people that match the criteria

 

 

Want to learn more?

Read about managing your rules in Amity. We also have tutorials about rules to get you started.