Time when an automation is sent

Andrew Gross

With the new automation architecture it looks like sometimes the exact hour can be chosen when an alert will be sent and other times, no. 

 

Alert type #1: For example, if an alert is sent a day before a task is due to start, the automation can be sent x days before and the user can choose which whole hour to send the date on, e.g., 7pm. 

Alert type #2: If the purpose of an automation is to alert when a row has been added or changed, it looks like the only time the alert can be run is when triggered, hourly, daily, or weekly. 

Questions

1- For type #2, am I correct in that the exact hour this second automation is sent cannot be controlled?

2- For type #2, if hourly is chosen, how is it determined which hour, e.g., 7pm, will the alert be sent?

 

Thanks,

AEG 

 

 

 

 

Genevieve P.

Hello Andrew,

1 - You are correct: when choosing Daily or Weekly, the system chooses the hour that this will run on that day or week. Please see our Learning Center article on Alerts & Reminders, under “Trigger Frequent, Change-Based Automations in Batches”:

• Workflows set to run Daily will evaluate changes to the sheet between 12:00 AM and 11:59 PM in the sheet Owner’s timezone, and messages will be delivered between 12:00 AM and 4:00 AM the next day. 
• Weekly workflows will evaluate changes to the sheet between the first Friday at 12:00 AM and the following Thursday until 11:59 PM. Messages will be delivered between 12:00 AM and 4:00 AM on the second Friday.

 

2 - For Hourly, the workflow will run once every hour, looking for changes that happened in the last 59 minutes. This means it will evaluate and run at 7pm, 8pm, 9pm, etc.

The minute of the hour cannot be specified, but at some point each hour it will check to see if any changes have been made. If no changes have been made, no alert will be sent.