What are Automations?
What Automations do, the three kinds, and why each one is delivered only to the person who made it.
An Automation runs work for you without you having to ask again. You give an Agent an instruction, choose when it should run, and Nalar sends you the result by Email or WhatsApp. Use it for a weekly sales summary, a reminder on a set date, or a notice when a dashboard metric crosses a threshold.
Three kinds of Automation
| Kind | When it runs | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Recurring | On a repeating schedule: daily, on weekdays, weekly, or monthly | Every Monday at 08:00, summarize last week's sales by region |
| One-time | Once, at a date and time in the future | On 30 November at 09:00, remind me to review the Q4 budget |
| Signal | When a dashboard metric crosses a threshold you set | When overdue receivables rise above a set amount |
For Recurring and One-time Automations, the message is an instruction, not a fixed text. Each time the Automation runs, the Agent carries out the instruction with the data available at that moment and sends you a fresh answer. If you ask for a fixed reminder, the reminder text is what you receive.
A Signal is the same thing as a dashboard metric alert. Metric alerts explains how to set one up.
Delivered only to you
Every Automation is delivered only to the person who created it. There is no recipient to choose and no way to add a teammate, a group, or an email address. Nalar sends to the Email address and WhatsApp number in your workspace profile.
To share a regular update with your team, each person creates their own Automation.
Who can do what
Anyone in the workspace can create an Automation, as long as they can use at least one Agent that has the Automations capability. The creator becomes the Automation's Owner.
| Role | What you can do |
|---|---|
| Automation Owner (the person who created it) | See it, test it, edit, pause, resume, and delete it |
| Anyone else, including Workspace Owners and Admins | Nothing. They can't see that it exists. |
An Automation never gives you access to data you don't already have. When it runs, it uses your current access, and if you lose access to the data it needs, it stops.
The Automations page
Open Automations in the sidebar. It opens on the Alerts tab, which lists your Automations. The Workflow tab is marked as coming soon and isn't available yet.
Active and Paused Automations share one list, with Active ones first. Each row shows:
- the name
- a summary of the flow: schedule, Agent, and channel for a scheduled Automation, or metric, condition, and channel for a Signal
- the next run date and how long until it, when there is one
- the status, and a menu of actions
Completed One-time Automations move to the Finished group, which you can expand. Select any row to open its details. You can reorder your list; the order you set is yours alone.
Nalar can also pause an Automation itself, for example when you lose access to its Agent. It then shows as paused in your list. See Managing and monitoring for what to do.