Automation Actions and What They Need Every action a workflow can take, and the prerequisite that makes each one work - the reason most automations fail silently.

An action is what a workflow actually does. Most automation problems are not logic problems - they are an action whose prerequisite was never met, failing quietly. The builder lists those prerequisites against each action, with a severity. Read them.

Communication

Action	Sends
Send WhatsApp	A templated WhatsApp message
Send Email	An email
Send Marketing Email	A consent-gated marketing email with campaign tracking
In-App Notification	A notification in the dashboard
Notify (multi-channel)	Email, WhatsApp and in-app together

Send WhatsApp carries two prerequisites, and the first is marked critical: you need a verified WhatsApp Business account with an approved template. WhatsApp does not permit arbitrary automated text. The second is a warning: the recipient must have opted in. Miss either and the send fails at the provider, not in your workflow.

Send Email needs mail sending configured. Send Marketing Email additionally needs a verified sending domain, and is consent-gated - it will not send to someone who has not consented to marketing, by design.

Notify inherits the prerequisites of every channel you select. Choosing all three means all three sets apply.

Data

Action	Does
Create Record	Inserts a new row
Update Record	Changes an existing row
Set Custom Field	Writes a value into a record's custom fields

Create Record takes the target table and a field mapping. Update Record takes the table, the field, and the new value.

Set Custom Field has the prerequisite that catches people most often: the target table must be allowlisted for automated writes, and the custom field must already exist for that entity. If either is missing, nothing is written and no error surfaces in the builder.

Integration And AI

Workflows can also create tasks, create invoices, call webhooks, and hand work to the AI step for analysis or summarising.

Call webhook is the escape hatch to anything the platform does not do natively.

Reading Severity

Each prerequisite carries one of three levels, and they mean different things:

• Critical - the action cannot work without it. Fix before activating.
• Warning - it will work in some cases and fail in others. Opt-in is a warning because some recipients will have opted in and some will not, so the workflow half-works, which is worse than failing outright.
• Info - worth knowing. Usually a note about permissions or auditing.

A half-working automation is the expensive kind. It looks fine on the executions list because some runs succeed.

Before You Activate Anything That Sends

Run this checklist. It takes two minutes and prevents the majority of failures.

1. Does the template exist? Check Communication Templates for the exact template the action references.
2. Is the channel connected? WhatsApp needs a verified business account; marketing email needs a verified domain.
3. Will the recipient resolve? Confirm the field carrying the recipient is populated on the records that will trigger this.
4. For WhatsApp, is the template approved? Approval is by the provider, not by you, and takes time.
5. For data actions, does the target exist? The custom field must be defined; the table must be writable.
6. Dry run, then activate, then check the first live execution in Automation Health.

Common Questions

My workflow shows as successful but nothing arrived. Almost always a send prerequisite. The workflow completed its step; the provider rejected the message. Automation Health's notification panel shows what happened after the workflow handed off.

Can I send a plain message instead of a template? Not for WhatsApp - the provider requires approved templates for business-initiated messages. Email is more flexible but still goes through a template.

How do I put the deal's value into the message? Templates carry variables, filled from the workflow's context automatically. You can override any variable per step.

Which action creates a follow-up task? Create Task. It takes the same fields as creating one by hand.