Automations overview
Automations are Relay's "if this happens, do that" workflows: a trigger that starts a run, followed by a list of steps — send a message, wait, branch on a condition, tag a contact, assign the conversation, and more. They react to a single event and then finish; they don't hold an ongoing conversation the way flows do.
Automations vs. flows
Both systems react to WhatsApp® events, but they solve different problems:
| Automations | Flows | |
|---|---|---|
| Shape | A trigger + a linear list of steps, with optional if/else branches | A visual node graph you draw on a canvas |
| Best for | One-off reactions: auto-replies, tagging, assignment, notifying a webhook | Guided, multi-turn conversations — menus, forms, collecting answers |
| Waiting for a reply | No built-in way to pause and read the customer's next message | collect_input and menu nodes read what the customer sends back |
| Editor | A stacked step list | @xyflow/react node canvas |
If you just need "when X happens, send a message and tag the contact," reach for an automation first — it's the simpler tool. If you need to ask the customer a question and branch on their answer, use a flow instead.
Triggers
Every automation starts from exactly one trigger. Relay has 8 trigger types — see the full trigger reference for all of them, including which ones actually fire today.
Steps
After the trigger, an automation runs through a list of steps top to bottom. Steps can send messages, wait, branch with a condition, manage tags and the contact record, assign or close the conversation, or call an outside webhook. See the step reference for all 13.
Quick-start templates
New to automations? The four quick-start templates on this page cover the most common patterns — a welcome message for first-time contacts, an out-of-office auto-reply, a lead qualifier that tags and assigns a conversation, and a follow-up reminder. Two of them get a full walkthrough: out-of-office reply and lead qualifier.
Logs
Every run — matched or not — is recorded per automation. Open an automation's
View Logs to see each execution's status (success, partial or
failed), which contact it ran for, and a step-by-step breakdown. See
Logs, templates and troubleshooting
for how to read them.