Pigment Automations use Metrics to set conditions that trigger a notification to defined Members. This article will discuss how to set up Automations.
Table of Contents
Check out the Pigment Automations overview video in the Academy!
What is a Pigment Automation?
Automations allow members to define conditions through Metrics that trigger notifications to other Members. Automations work by defining a trigger based on any Metric and a corresponding action. The trigger defines the exact value and conditions that must be met in order to send the action. The action then defines which members receive a notification and the contents of the notification.
Looking for some inspiration? Check out Pigment automation ideas for 6 different use cases!
What are Automations for?
The notifications can be customized to your individual use case. Some common use cases are starting a new workflow, alerting a member when a threshold is reached, and notifying Members when their approval is needed.
Depending on a users notification settings, they will also receive an email from the notification.
Setting up an Automation
Permissions needed
You need the Configure Automations Permission to be able to Create/Edit/Delete/Enable/Disable an Automation. This Permission has been granted to all members having the Configure Blocks Permission. You need the View History Permission to view the execution details of each Automation.
Define the Metric
The first step in creating an Automation is to define or create the Metric on which the automation is applied. This Metric can be user input driven, such as a request for approval, or formula driven, for example writing a formula that is equal to true. Once this is established, you can create your Automation.
Step 1. Create an Automation
- Navigate to to the Automations settings page by clicking Automations from the Application sidebar.
- Click Set up a new Automation.
- Enter a Name and Description for the Automation. This information will be for the management of Automations and for others to understand the purpose of this Automation.
You can create an automation directly from any Metric or Table by right-clicking on a Metric name and selecting Set Automation on update.
Step 2. Establish a Trigger
- To set up the Trigger for your Automation, select the Metric that will trigger the action when the defined value is met based on the data type and its corresponding trigger operator as shown in the following table:
| Data Type | Trigger Operators |
| Number, Integer and Date |
|
| Text |
|
| Dimension |
|
| Boolean | Equals True or False |
- Apply Trigger conditions. You can apply multiple conditions by clicking on Add a condition.
Trigger conditions allow you to choose specific items within the dimensions of your Metric for a more targeted automation. First select the dimension from the Metric that you want to apply the condition to, then select the values from that dimension. For example, if the automation should only be triggered for a specific Country, select the Country dimension and then which country this trigger applied to.
Step 3. Select Recipients
When selecting recipients you can choose between Direct, Conditional or a combination of the two. Direct recipients will receive a notification every time the automation is triggered.
Conditional recipients will only receive a notification based on the items assigned to them from an associated Metric. For example, if you have a Triggering Metric that applies to all countries, you can set up a Metric for conditional recipients and select which Member receives a notification for each country.
Direct & Conditional combine both types of recipients, this means you can associate some Members to certain conditions, and other Members will always receive a direct notification.
When choosing or creating a Metric, it must contain all or some of the dimensions used in the Triggering Metric, along with the User list. You can learn more about how to set up conditional recipients in the Setting up Conditional Recipients article.
Click Set up Configuration to launch a wizard that will create all the necessary dimensions including the User list for your Conditional Recipient Metric. The User list will show all the Members in your application, next to the dimensions from your Triggering Metric. For each Member you want to receive a notification, set the boolean to true for the associated items.
Step 4. Create Notification Content
Fill out the content that you want Members to receive for their notification.
Notification title - This is the text that will be seen in bold at the top of the notification.
Notification body - This is the text that will be seen below the title within the notification.
Redirection (optional) - Enter the link to the Board or widget that you want Members to land on when they click on the notification. External links are not supported.
URLs from a Board or widgets are page selector specific. This means that when you copy a link, it will also copy the current page selections.
Dynamic content in Notifications
Dynamic content is a feature within Automation notifications that brings in details on the triggering event. Details such as the Recipients name, Date and time, the item details of the dimensions used in structure, as well as the Value that triggered the notification can be used in the title or content of the notification.
Click + Add dynamic content or use the cmd or ctrl + / shortcut to see a list of options that can be used. | 
|
| Dynamic content | Value |
|---|---|
| Recipient Name | Shows the name of each individual who receives the notification. This name is pulled from the Workspace Members page. |
| Triggering Value | The value that was entered into the cell that triggered the notification. For example, it could be a number, true or false, name of dimension item, or any other formatted entry. |
| Date and time | Shows the time and Date DAY, DATE, MON YYYY HH:MM:SS GMT |
| Dimension name | This option will appear as the name of the Dimensions used in the Triggering Metric. The number of dimensions used in the Triggering Metric will determine how many options are present. Selecting one of these will return the item from that dimension that triggered the notification. For example, |
Step 5. Activate Automation
New Automations are not activated by default. From the Automations settings page, use the toggle switch to activate the notification.
Check out the Automations Setup Overview micro-lesson in the Academy!
Reviewing Automation history
Each automation has its own individual history showing when it was executed and which members were sent a notification. From the Automations settings page, click Show History to see when Automations were triggered. This history will show the last 30 times an Automation was executed.
Next to the execution history, you will see the status of Current configuration or Previous configuration. Any editing of an automation will create a new Current configuration and all others will be listed as Previous.
See More
Setting up Conditional Recipients.