Automation — Processes That Run Themselves

Anything that today relies on someone remembering — reminders, hand-offs, escalations, follow-ups — becomes a flow: a visual diagram the platform executes reliably, with a run history you can inspect.

Five ways a flow starts

1. When records change — created, updated, or deleted, with conditions that can compare old vs. new values ("amount crossed 500k" fires once, not on every unrelated edit).
2. On a schedule — every morning at 8, every Monday, the 1st of each month.
3. Relative to record dates — 30 days before contract expiry, 7 days after signing, evaluated per record.
4. Launched by a person — button-triggered wizards like "Convert lead".
5. Called by an external system — your website or ERP pings an endpoint and the flow runs.

What flows can do

Create, update, and delete records · send notifications (in-app, email, chat) · branch on conditions · run steps in parallel and join · loop over a set of records · wait for a duration or a signal · call external services · invoke shared sub-flows.

Reliability you can see

Flows are enabled or disabled with a switch and start life as drafts. Every execution leaves a run record — which node, what outcome — and the diagram in Studio is the executable logic, so documentation never drifts from behavior.

In HotCRM: seventeen flows run the whole sales-and-service motion — lead auto-assignment · lead conversion · opportunity approval · stagnation alerts · won announcements · quote generation · quote expiry reminders · contract expiration · renewal task creation · case escalation · case SLA monitoring · CSAT follow-up · campaign enrollment · campaign completion · new-contact welcome · task due reminders · urgent-task alerts. Open any of them in Studio's Automation pillar to read the diagram.

For developers: triggers, nodes, and flow metadata in Automation.