Overview
Automations are built on a visual canvas: a Trigger card at the top, connected to a vertical chain of step cards. You add steps with the + buttons on the canvas and configure whichever card is selected in the panel on the right. Edits autosave to a draft; nothing goes live until you click Publish.
Step 1: Create the Automation
- Go to Automations in the sidebar
- Click Create Automation
- Give it a name — the title field at the top of the page. A name is required to publish.
Step 2: Configure the Trigger
Select the Trigger card and choose your Trigger source (CRM), Object, and Trigger type in the right-hand panel. See Triggers for the full breakdown of trigger types and conditions.Step 3: Add Steps
Click the + button below the last card (or on a connector between cards, to insert a step in the middle). The Add step dialog offers three groups:- Apten Actions — act on leads in Apten: Find Lead, Create Lead, Turn Off Lead, Send Message, Switch Profile, Add Context, Register DNC, Resolve Timezone. See Actions.
- CRM Actions — look up a record in a connected CRM (for example Find Salesforce Record) and expose its fields to later steps.
- Control — Filter (stop the run unless conditions match), Delay (pause before continuing), and Branch (split into multiple paths). See Control Steps.
An automation can have up to 10 top-level steps, up to 10 steps inside each branch, and up to 75 steps in total. Branches can be nested up to 3 levels deep. Control steps count like any other: a Branch step takes one of the 10 slots in the chain that contains it, and Filter, Delay, and Branch steps count toward the 75-step total.
Step 4: Reference Data From the Trigger and Earlier Steps
Most step fields accept dynamic references. Type / in a field to open a picker of available values:- Trigger fields — data from the CRM record that fired the automation, inserted as
{{trigger.FieldName}} - Step outputs — results from earlier steps, inserted as
{{steps.<stepId>.output.FieldName}}
Step 5: Publish
Click Publish. Apten validates the whole automation first — if anything is missing or invalid, a banner lists each issue and the offending cards are outlined in red. Fix the issues and publish again. While editing a published automation:- Your changes autosave to a draft; the live version keeps running unchanged, and an Unpublished changes pill appears next to the status badge.
- Publish replaces the live version with your draft.
- Discard draft throws away your edits and keeps the live version as-is.
Runs that are already in progress use the version of the automation they started with, so publishing changes doesn’t alter them. Turning off or deleting an automation does not stop other in-flight runs, but if the automation is off or deleted when a Delay ends, that waiting run halts instead of continuing.