Automations

You book Sarah on a Royal Caribbean cruise. From that moment, without you doing anything else, she gets:

• a booking confirmation the day it is booked,
• your payment reminders as her deposit and final balance come due,
• a Cruise Planner note 90 days out, a shore excursions nudge at 60,
• her Set Sail Pass reminder the week check-in opens,
• her travel documents and a pre-trip checklist the fortnight before,
• an embarkation guide three days before she sails,
• and a welcome home three days after she is back.

Every one of those emails is yours to read and change. And at any point you can open Sarah's trip and see exactly what she has had, what is waiting on you, and what is still to come.

New here? The Automations page now holds your emails too — the old Templates page became its Emails tab. Nothing about what sends changed. If your agency would rather have the old screens for now, an owner or admin can press Go back to the old system in the box at the top of the page.

The one idea to understand: layers

Here is what makes this easy to run. You do not write a payment reminder for Royal Caribbean, then another for Disney, then another for Sandals. You write it once.

• Every trip is the layer every client gets, whatever they book. Payment reminders. Final payment due. Travel documents. The pre-trip checklist. Welcome home. It is on from day one and it runs on every trip.
• A supplier automation sits on top for one kind of trip, and only holds what is different about that supplier. Royal Caribbean's Cruise Planner note. Disney Cruise Line's Castaway Club windows. Walt Disney World's dining strategy.

A Royal Caribbean trip runs on both. The two layers combine into the one sequence Sarah gets. So her real sequence is:

Three things fall out of this that make your life simpler:

1. Change a universal email once, and every trip gets the change. Reword the payment reminder in Every trip and every cruise line, every Disney trip and every land package sends the new wording.
2. A supplier can have its own version of something, and only its clients get it. Give Disney Cruise Line its own final-payment email and only Disney clients receive it. Royal Caribbean clients keep Every trip's. Nobody gets two.
3. You never have to copy the universal emails into a supplier. On a supplier's timeline, Every trip's emails show faded with From Every trip. That is the layer showing through, not something missing.

What you see when you open Automations

• This week — what is going out in the next seven days, with the client and trip on each line.
• Waiting on you — emails held for your approval, oldest first.
• Your automations, grouped — Every trip first, then Cruises, Disney parks and the other groups you use, then Client care. Each line says what it sends, how many trips it is running on, and when it next sends. The switch on the right turns the whole group on or off.

Along the top: Automations (this overview, or All automations for a plain list), Emails (the wording), Activity (what went out, across every trip), and Presets (ready-made sets to add).

Things you will actually do

"Let me see what my cruise clients get"

Open Cruises. You land on your busiest line's timeline, in trip order: from booking, from a payment, from departure, from return. Each row reads in plain words — 14 days before · departure — with the email's name and the subject line the client will see underneath. Switch lines with the chips under the title, or pick Any cruise line to see them all together; where two lines differ, each gets its own row.

"Did Sarah get her documents?"

On any timeline, pick her trip from Show it for a real trip…. The same rows turn into dates and states for her: Sent, Waiting on you, Sends on a date, Skipped, Failed. It reads from her trip's own queue, so it is the truth. Her trip page links straight here too, from Communications › Automation.

On her trip's Communications › Emails pane, every row also carries one plain sentence under its name saying what happened or what it is waiting for: Sent Aug 22, Written and waiting for you to approve it. Nothing goes out until you do, Waiting on the deposit. It goes out once the deposit is paid, Didn't send: the trip had already departed, Automations are turned off for this trip, so this stays put until that changes. The badge says what state it is in; the sentence says why.

"I want to change the wording of the payment reminder"

Click the row. The step opens in a panel: When (how many days, before or after), How (Send it for me or Ask me first), To (the client, everyone travelling, or you), and an On / Off switch. The email itself is right underneath — subject, body, header photo, and a preview you can switch to a real upcoming trip so the merge fields fill in. Press Save for the wording; the controls above save as you change them.

Because that reminder lives in Every trip, the change reaches every trip. Nothing else to do.

"I want Disney Cruise clients to get a different final-payment email"

Open Cruises, pick Disney Cruise Line, press More options on any row to reach its settings page, and Add step: choose the Final Payment Due trigger and your Disney email. From then on Disney clients get yours and everyone else keeps Every trip's. The Cruises timeline says so on the row: Disney Cruise Line sends its own · Royal Caribbean still gets this.

"I'd rather approve an email before it goes"

On the row, press Ask me. That email waits in Waiting on you until you send it. Many advisors run a new automation this way for its first cycle, then switch it to Send it for me once they have seen it go out.

"I've started booking Carnival"

Press Add, or open Presets. Every preset is a card that lists its emails and when each sends. Click Carnival Cruise (or any email on its card) to read the emails first: a panel opens with each one in send order, the subject and the body as the client will see it, with merge fields shown as labelled pills. Add automation sits at the bottom of that panel, and Copy to my templates on any email puts just that wording into your Templates if you want it without the automation. Everything you add arrives switched off, so nothing sends by surprise.

"Send birthday emails to my clients"

On the overview, the Client care row offers Add birthday and Add passport expiring. These run on people rather than trips — every client with a birthday on file gets the note on the day, from their own advisor.

"This trip shouldn't get any of this"

On the trip, the Automations switch on the Communications card pauses everything for that trip. Turn it back on and anything that came due while paused waits for your review instead of sending late.

"A client's trip was imported and their automations are off"

Select the trips on the Trips page and press Resume automations. You see a preview first — 3 trips · 12 emails will resume · 4 held for your review — then confirm.

"It says can't match a trip yet"

A group is on, but its rule asks for something no trip in your workspace can carry, so it will never enroll anyone however long it stays on. The row says so in red instead of "no trips coming up", tells you why (nothing marks a trip as international yet), and Fix opens the rule so you can point it at trips you actually have. A line inside a group can be in the same state on its own: its chip turns red while its siblings stay green. If more than one group is affected, a line at the top of the list names them.

Two of the groups every workspace starts with, International and Group, are in this state until you give them a rule that matches your trips. Switching a group off clears the warning; so does enrolling a trip in it by hand.

Emails

The Emails tab is every email your automations can send, grouped the same way as the overview. The When column shows where each one is used — 90 days before · departure · Royal Caribbean — because timing lives on the step, not on the email. Click one to edit its wording.

If any of your emails are still sending on their own built-in timing from before, the overview says so at the bottom. Review and move them puts each on a step in the right automation. Until you do, they keep sending exactly as they always have.

If you work in an agency

Your agency has one set of automations that belongs to the agency. Every advisor runs it, every email goes out from the client's own advisor with that advisor's name and signature, and a new advisor inherits the set the day they join. If your agency is older and each advisor had their own copies, the owner's set becomes the agency's the first time a new advisor joins; advisors who already had their own keep running those.

An owner or admin decides, per automation, how much choice each advisor has:

Copy to mine gives an advisor a personal fork that never updates from the agency again. It arrives switched off; once on, it runs instead of the agency's for that advisor's trips.

Switching things off

• A group's switch (on the overview) turns every automation in it off. It asks first, because anything already scheduled for those trips is cancelled. Turning it back on schedules the upcoming trips again.
• A step's switch turns one email off. Anything it had scheduled is held, not cancelled.
• A trip's Automations switch pauses that trip only.
• Turn off for me (agency automations) stops that one automation on your trips only.

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Reference

How a trip joins an automation

A trip joins Every trip when it is created. It joins a supplier automation when the trip's Supplier (the timeline template on the trip) matches that automation. A trip with no supplier runs on Every trip alone. Disney Cruise is the exception: it is also recognised from a booking's ship or supplier name.

Trips are re-checked when you change their supplier or add a required tag. Steps still ahead queue normally; steps whose date has already passed land in Needs attention on the trip for you to send or skip.

Every action a step can take

A trigger says when. The action says what happens. Most steps send an email, but the step form offers six, under More options → Something other than an email.

A step does exactly one of these. There is no way to attach a card link or a form to an email step, so if you want a reminder and a signing link, that is either two steps or, for payments, the invoice doing the link half on its own.

Send Shared Card Link is narrower than it sounds. It forwards a shared link you have already published on a trip, and it never works out an amount. It is for a group or an event where one link collects from many payers. It is not how you ask one client to authorize their deposit or their balance, and on a trip with no published shared link it pauses instead of sending. For chasing one client's payment, see Final Payment Workflow.

Every trigger you can pick

The step panel covers the common anchors. The settings page's step form offers the full list:

Client automations use Client Birthday and Passport Expiring. Lead automations use When a new lead is created and When a tag is added to a lead.

Trip Added sends right away, booking or not. Trip Booked waits for the trip's first booking — any booking, at any status — and is dropped if none arrives within 30 days. Want a welcome note a few days after booking? Trip Booked, 3 days after.

Lead triggers. When a new lead is created checks once, as the lead is added. When a tag is added to a lead checks when you apply the tag, so it works for people already on your list. Each lead goes through a step once.

Don't build a whole sequence on Trip Added. +0, +30 and +90 days from the day you made the trip is the same calendar for a booking made a year out and one made three weeks out. Use Trip Added for the booking emails, then the departure and return anchors for the rest.

When in the day emails go out

At the top of the Automations page: Automations send at ___. Pick an hour and your agency's time zone. Every scheduled step follows it — payment reminders, documents, welcome-home notes, birthdays. New agencies start at 9:00 AM Eastern.

One email can differ. Open the step and use the At dropdown next to the day count: leave it on Default to follow the agency setting, or pick an hour for that email alone.

Trip Added and Trip Booked have no At dropdown, on purpose. They don't wait for a date on the calendar — they fire when the trip is created or the first booking lands — so there is no day to put a time on. A booking confirmation should arrive when the booking happens, not the next morning.

Two things worth knowing. The time is yours, not the client's: 9:00 AM means 9:00 AM where you are, and a client two zones over gets it at their own local equivalent — sending in each client's own morning is not something we do yet. And emails leave on the hour, so minutes aren't an option.

Changing the agency time applies from that moment on. Anything already scheduled keeps the time it was given, and picks the new one up if the trip's dates change.

Disney Cruise Line: Castaway Club windows

Disney Cruise automations time their booking-window emails to each guest's Castaway Club tier, read from the trip:

Days before sailing. Concierge staterooms get a wider Port Adventures window. Navigator App Setup (about 150 days) and Pirate Night Prep (about 14) are the same for every tier. The emails address the guest's own tier with {{castaway_tier}}, {{port_adventures_window_date}} and {{online_checkin_window_date}}.

Skip conditions

Under More options on a step: Skip if paid in full, Skip if deposit paid, Skip if traveler info complete, Skip if passport on file, Skip if insurance purchased. Checked on the day the email is due, so a trip insured three weeks in still skips the reminder. Presets set the payment reminders to skip when paid; add conditions to your own steps yourself.

Merge fields

Emails fill in from the trip when they send. Use the pills under the subject line or the Merge Fields button in the editor.

Going back to the old screens

The box at the top of Automations says which system your agency is on. An owner or admin can press Go back to the old system, and Try it to come forward again. Both read the same automations and emails, so nothing is lost by switching.