Spectora has always been at the forefront of providing powerful tools for home inspectors, and now, we're taking it a step further. Our Advanced Actions feature has undergone a major update, with a fresh name to match its new capabilities.
Introducing Advanced Automations - a more intuitive, robust, and streamlined way to automate workflows and improve efficiency. Let’s dive into what makes these improvements a game-changer.
Currently, this will be a staged rollout in the coming months and not available to all Advanced users at once.
Walk-through Video
Before getting started we recommend checking out this walk-through video below!
Brand New User Interface
Upon accessing the new Advanced Automations, you'll notice a refreshed user interface. This sleek, improved design enhances ease of use, navigation, and overall user experience!
When getting started, you can scroll to the bottom of this main dashboard and click "How it works" for a walk-through on Advanced Automations.
✨ For the course of this rollout, the navigation bar in the Spectora dashboard will still read "Actions" even if you have the new Automations experience.
Improved Organization of Automations
First, check out this quick walk-through video on using Categories to better organize your automations and how it works!
You'll see three drop-down menus for ease of filtering your Automations for editing. We'll go into more detail on each below.
All Categories
Here you can toggle on each Category, similar to the previous Action Groups, to easily sort through each Category of Automations.
You can also click the "Manage Categories" button to add new Categories and edit existing Categories.
All Recipients
Here you can toggle on specific Recipients you want to filter by.
All Status
Here you can filter by active or inactive Automations.
✨You can use the "Search" bar to enter specific parameters and quickly find Automations that match your criteria.
You can click the three dots to the right of a specific automation for additional options. You can access the edit page, deactivate the automation, duplicate or delete the automation.
Deactivating the automation will prevent it from being included in any inspections, but it won’t be deleted—allowing you to make further edits or reactivate it later without losing any of its data
Duplicating the automation will create an exact copy of the automation.
Deleting will permanently remove the automation and all data on it will be lost.
Default Settings
If you click the gear icon to the right of "Automations" at the top of the main dashboard, a new window will pop-up where you can set default settings that will automatically populate on all of your new automations.
Send during certain hours only - once you enable this you'll see the option to control the time frame in which the automation can be sent.
Do not send on weekends - when this is toggled on it will prevent the automation from sending on the weekends.
✨ Default settings will automatically populate on newly created automations, but you can still edit them on each individual automation!
Improved Set Up Formatting
Before diving in, check out the video below!
When creating a new Automation you'll see the three key parts of the set-up. We'll go over each of these is more detail.
Automation Name and Category are the first options at the top of the page, these will assist you in organizing and filtering your automations.
When this happens
The first step in creating your Automation, similar to Actions "Event", use this to choose and set up the event that determines when your message is sent.
When you click to edit, you'll see clear descriptions for each scenario to help you decide what will work best.
Only send if (optional)
Similar to Actions "Rules", use these Conditions to narrow down specifics to control when your message is sent.
Each Condition is like a filter to assist in customization and control of whether or not an Automation will be sent.
If you have no Conditions / leave this blank then the Automation will go out on all inspections.
You'll notice when you add more than one Condition that the "and" and "or" options are present.
And: This means that all requirements have to be met for the Automation to be sent out. So, all Conditions set would have to apply in order for the Automation to send.
Or: This means any of the rules can apply for this to be sent. So, just one Condition would have to apply in order for the Automation to send.
At this time you cannot use both And and Or on one Automation.
✨ Keep in mind Automations are very literal, they will strictly follow how you've set them up.
Do this
Similar to Actions "Details", use this to determine what is being sent; an email, text, or web-hook, and who it's being sent to.
Here you can customize the body of the email, or text (if you have a Custom Phone Number with us). Add your placeholders, links, text edits, logos etc.
Set the time frame for when the Automation goes out, and check out the Additional settings for in depth control.
Only trigger once: this will ensure the Automation only triggers to send one time, no matter if the conditions have been met more than once, avoiding duplicates.
Also send recurring jobs: enable to trigger this automation for recurring scheduled inspections.
Send even when notifications disabled: enable to send even when notifications are disabled. Use caution when toggling this on!
Send during certain hours only: use this control the specific times in which the automation will send.
Do not send on weekends: use this to keep automations from sending on weekends. Especially if you don't work weekends, you don't a want a response when you're enjoying your time off!
You'll also notice new time intervals here for minutes. Time interval spacing helps maintain sender reputation and increases the likelihood that emails reach inboxes rather than spam folders. You can select ten minute windows of time for when the automation will send when using minutes.
For hours, days, weeks and months you can input any number.
🔴 In order to customize texts, you will need a Custom Phone Number with us. Check out this article for information.
If you have any questions or feedback, write into our chat bubble or email support@spectora.com!
