Actions

When an automation’s trigger fires and its conditions are met, it performs an action. There are three types: send an email, send a text message, or create a task. An automation can run more than one action — add as many as you need on the same trigger.

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Template variables

Email subjects, email bodies, and SMS messages can include variables like {{customer.name}} that resolve when the automation runs. The automation builder shows a panel of available variables under each message field — click one to insert the matching token at the cursor. The list adapts to the automation type: order automations expose order-related tokens, event automations expose event-related tokens, and both share the customer set.

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Order automation variables

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Event automation variables

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Per-recipient contact variables (event automations only)

When an event automation action has an Event contacts loop on it, a second set of variables appears in the picker. These resolve to the current recipient’s details, so each fan-out email or SMS is addressed to that specific contact rather than the event’s primary customer. Use {{customer.first_name}} when you mean the event’s primary customer (always the same across every iteration of the loop), and {{contact.first_name}} when you mean the person the current iteration is being sent to. The two are different on purpose — most fan-out messages want {{contact.*}} for the greeting and {{customer.*}} when referring to who booked the event. The picker only shows the {{contact.*}} set when the action is configured to loop over event contacts. If you switch off the loop, those variables disappear from the picker (existing tokens in your message body keep working but resolve to empty strings outside the loop). Loops use a different syntax (%name%, %quantity% and so on) and only work inside a looping action — see Loops below for the full set per loop type.

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Send an email

The most common action. When the automation fires, an email goes out to the customer on the order or event, wrapped in your standard notification layout and branding.

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Setting it up

The email always goes to the customer recorded on the order or event. If you need to notify a team member instead of (or as well as) the customer, set up a separate notification event for that — see Notifications. If the email action has a loop on it, the body is rendered once per loop item, with loop variables like %name% filled in for each one. See Loops for the full variable list per loop type.

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Send a text message (SMS)

Sends a text message to the customer’s phone number when the automation fires. Useful for time-sensitive notifications like delivery updates.

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Setting it up

Enter the SMS content. The same variables work in SMS as in email — see Template variables. Keep the message short: standard SMS messages are 160 characters, and longer ones are split into multiple parts and use multiple credits, so insert variables sparingly. The SMS sends to the phone number on the customer record by default. If the action has an Event contacts loop on it, the SMS sends to each contact’s phone instead, once per contact. If a phone number is missing, the automation logs that the SMS was skipped and moves on. Your order or event isn’t blocked.

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Create a task

Automatically creates a task when the automation fires. This is great for making sure preparation steps, follow-ups, or checks don’t get forgotten.

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Setting it up

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Scheduling the due date

By default a created task is due straight away. To prep ahead, set a due date relative to the order or event using one of these fields.

• Days Before — the task is due that many days before the order’s fulfilment date or the event date (like a prep task 7 days before).
• Days After — the task is due that many days after (like a follow-up 14 days after).

Set one or the other, not both. Digital Florists works out the due date when the automation fires. If the order or event date changes afterwards, the task’s due date doesn’t recalculate. The created task appears on your Tasks board and can be assigned, completed, and tracked like any other task.

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Loops

Loops let you repeat part of an action for each item in a list. Tick Enable Looping on an action and pick what to loop over.

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Loop variables

Inside a loop, the message body is rendered once per item with the %variable% values filled in for that item. Each loop has its own variable set: Outside a loop, use the {{ }} variables from Template variables instead. The two syntaxes are intentional: {{ }} refers to the order or event the automation fired on, %% refers to the current item inside the loop.

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How loops work with emails

The email is sent once per loop item with the loop variables filled in. Three of the loops (Order items, Event quotation recipes, Event quotation ingredients) all send to the customer recorded on the order or event, with a different message each time. The Event contacts loop is different — see below.

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Event contacts loop — sends to each contact in turn

The Event contacts loop is the only loop that changes who the email or SMS is sent to. For each contact on the event:

• The email goes to that contact’s email address (not the event customer’s)
• The SMS goes to that contact’s phone number (not the event customer’s)
• The {{contact.*}} template variables from Per-recipient contact variables resolve to the current recipient’s details, so the greeting reads “Hi Sarah” for the bride and “Hi Tom” for the groom on the same automation
• The legacy %first_name%, %last_name%, %email%, %phone%, %label% loop tokens still work and resolve to the same values — the modern {{contact.*}} syntax is the recommended one because it’s shown in the variable picker
• If a contact is missing a value (no email on a contact who’s phone-only, for example), the loop falls back to the event’s customer details so the message still goes out — but only when it’s a sensible fallback, never to the wrong person

Use it for any “fan out” scenario: send the same reminder to the bride, groom, and venue coordinator without writing three automations.

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How loops work with tasks

When you use a loop with a create task action, Digital Florists generates a checklist on the task with one item per loop entry. For example, if an order has three products and you use the Order items loop, the task gets a three-item checklist — one for each product, with %name% x %quantity% filled in per line.

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Common questions

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What’s next?