Sales Automation in CRM: Robots and Business Processes

Half of a sales rep's work is the same steps over and over: after sending a proposal, set yourself a task to call back; after payment, hand the client over; before a meeting, send a reminder about it. These are exactly the steps that get forgotten. In emyCRM, robots take care of them: you describe a rule once — “when, under what condition, what to do” — and from then on the CRM repeats it on its own.

What is a robot

A robot is a rule on a pipeline stage: when a card reaches the stage or its data changes, the CRM checks a condition and performs an action. Robots work in deals, invoices and custom entities, and you set them up with the “Robots” button on the section's toolbar or the icon in a kanban column header. The window has three tabs: “Stage” for this stage's robots, “All cards” for rules that watch cards at any stage, and “Log” for the history of runs.

Robots can be set up by an employee with the “Configure automations” permission. By default, only the administrator has it.

When a robot fires

• Stage entered: the card reached the stage — manually, by dragging it on the kanban board or through another robot.
• Data changed: the card itself or its invoices and line items changed; handy for recalculations.
• Field changed: a specific field got a different value, at any stage or at a selected one.

A condition compares a field with a number, text, another field of the card or its previous value: “equals,” “greater than,” “between,” “contains,” “is empty,” “changed,” “previously was.” Several conditions are combined with “ALL” or “ANY.”

The action can run right away, after a few minutes, hours or days, or relative to a date in a field — for example, a day before the expected close date. Right before running, the CRM checks the condition again, and if the card has already left the stage, that stage's delayed actions are canceled.

What a robot can do

• Create a task for the owner or a selected employee; you can hold the next robots until the task is done.
• Move to a stage: the selected one, one step back, or back to where the card was before.
• Change the owner, set a field or calculate with a formula — for example, the total of payments on the deal's invoices.
• Send email to client from the selected employee's mailbox — with an “Undo” window, just like a regular email.
• Message client in messenger, if the messenger app from the marketplace is connected in the workspace.
• A notification in the bell, a message in the internal chat's “Automation” channel and a calendar event.
• Close the card's tasks and add a comment.

Card fields are inserted into the text of emails, messages and tasks: the client's name, the amount, a date. Actions from add-on apps appear in the list only when the app is turned on.

Example: a deal after a proposal

1. “Proposal sent” stage → “Create a task” for the rep: “Call the client back” in two days.
2. Same stage → “Send email to client” in three days: “Did you get a chance to look at the proposal?” — on condition that the deal is still at that stage.
3. “Paid” stage → “Change the owner” to the account manager and “Add a calendar event”: a call in a month.
4. “Expected close” field → “Send a notification” to the sales manager a day before the date, if the deal is still open.

Safeguards against mistakes

A robot won't move a deal to a stage if that stage's required fields are empty — and a field that's required at a stage is required at all the following stages too. Robots that trigger each other go no deeper than five levels, and each one runs once per pass, so the pipeline can't get stuck in a loop.

In the “Log,” every run has a status — “Done,” “Failed,” “Skipped” or “Scheduled” — and a skipped run shows the reason. If a robot didn't fire, that's where you find the answer, instead of guessing.

Inquiries without manual work

Some automation works even without robots. A call from a new number creates a lead on its own, and whoever answered becomes the owner. A missed call turns into a “Call back” task with a deadline — you turn this rule on in the telephony settings, and the task closes on its own once someone gets through to the client. Read more in our article on the sales pipeline in CRM.

Business processes: started from other systems

The free “Business processes” app in the marketplace builds a “condition → action” chain for deals, leads, companies and contacts. Unlike a robot, a process isn't started by an event in the CRM but by an API request: your website or accounting system calls the process for a specific record. The steps run as a whole — if one fails, the entire process is rolled back. The administrator sets up processes, and runs are visible in the log.

Where to start

1. List the repetitive steps at each pipeline stage: what reps do by hand every time.
2. Start with one task robot on the stage where deals get stuck most often.
3. After a week, open the “Log”: what ran, what was skipped and why.
4. Add client emails and owner changes once the tasks have taken hold.