The Automations Designer

The automations designer is a node-flow based visual programming environment designed for all technical skill levels.

Creating A Template

Start by navigating to the automations page within the Courier app. From there, a new automation template can be created by clicking the New Automation Button.

Automations Home Page

Renaming The Template

To rename a template, click the name in the upper left hand corner of the designer. By default, the name is "Untitled Automation". The name is automatically saved after being updated.

Renaming an automation template

Using Nodes

A new template starts with two placeholder nodes. A trigger placeholder, and an action placeholder.

The top placeholder with acts as a placeholder for an automation trigger node. A trigger node defines what starts an automation run. The trigger is optional, a template can always be directly triggered using the api/automations/:template_id/invoke api endpoint

The bottom one acts as a placeholder for action and control flow nodes.

To add nodes, expand from the list on the left and then click and drag a node onto the right. The first trigger and action node will snap into their respective placeholders:

Nodes are executed sequentially through their connections, from top to bottom. To connect two nodes, click and drag from the white dot at the bottom of the source node to the top of the target node:

Invoking an Automation Template

Publish

Be sure to publish the template before invoking (using the publish button on the upper right)

API/Trigger

There are a few ways to invoke a template, either through a trigger node or through an api call.

See Scheduling automations or Triggering With Segment for to get a feel of how trigger nodes work.

To run an automation by api call, grab the automation template id or the alias from the settings section of the designer and invoke it by calling POST api/automations/:template_id_here/invoke. View Automations API docs for more details.

Template ID location, settings tab

From the Designer

You can invoke the automation template directly from the designer in the Invoke tab. This can be a good way to test the automation or to invoke very simple automation templates. Note: Invoking from the designer will pass an empty data payload {} to the automation run

Template invoke tab