Automations - Record Automations

Sequences chase contacts by email. Record automations do something different: they watch records against a date, and when that date crosses a threshold they act on the record itself. No email required.

Two things they are good at:

Escalation. A lead nobody has touched in a fortnight gets reassigned, flagged, or handed to a manager as a to-do.
Deadlines. A renewal, a grant return, or a licence expiry raises a to-do a set number of days before it lands.

Record automations live alongside email sequences at Automations > Sequences. They are the same form, with a different trigger.

If you do not see the Escalation clock option in the trigger list, it has not been enabled for your account. An Admin user can request it by contacting your ORCA account manager.

Setting the trigger

Choose Escalation clock (days since a date field, while status is open) from the trigger list. The form then asks for:

Section. Which section holds the records you want watched, for example Leads or Opportunities.

Count days since. The date field the clock reads. Last Contacted, Renewal Date, Application Deadline, whatever the section has.

When to fire. A number of days plus a direction:

after that date has passed (overdue) is the escalation reading. Seven days after Last Contacted means a lead nobody has touched for a week.
before that date arrives (deadline) is the early-warning reading. Thirty days before Renewal Date means a month's notice.

The two directions treat empty dates differently, and this matters more than it sounds:

In overdue mode, a record with no date at all counts as overdue straight away. A lead that has never been contacted is the thing you most want to catch.
In deadline mode, records with no date are ignored. There is no deadline to approach, and including them would fire on every undated record in the section the first time it ran.

Status field (must map to Open). The automation only acts on records whose status still counts as open, so a lead you have already won or lost is left alone. Open is not a fixed list: it reads whichever statuses you have mapped as open in Settings > Sales pipeline. Map a status there and every escalation clock inherits it, including ones your team invented after the automation was built.

Hold until (optional). A second date field that acts as a snooze. If a record has this date set in the future, it is skipped no matter how stale it looks. Useful when a customer has asked you to come back in March, and you do not want the system nagging in the meantime.

Steps

Steps run in the order you list them. A record automation can use three kinds:

Update a field

Writes a value straight into a field on the record. Pick the field, and the value input changes to suit its type:

User field gives you a list of people on the account
Checkbox gives you a "Set to checked" tick
Picklist gives you that picklist's options
Number and text give you a plain input

Typical use: reassign a stale lead to a pooled owner, and tick a "Needs attention" box so it stands out in the list.

Raise a to-do

Creates an assignable to-do, linked to the record that triggered it, so whoever picks it up lands on the right page rather than hunting for context. You set:

To-do title, for example "Chase unsigned agreement"
Notes, optional
Assign to the person in, a user field on the record, so the to-do follows whoever owns it
Or, if that's empty, a named person to fall back on when that field is blank
Due, a number of days after the automation fires. Zero means the same day.

The two assignee settings work together. ORCA reads the user field first, and only uses the named fallback if that field is empty. You can set either, or both. If a step ends up with nobody to assign to, no to-do is created, because an unassigned to-do never shows up on anyone's list. The form warns you about this while you are still editing.

Send an email

The same email step sequences use, available here too if you want a record automation that also writes to somebody. See Sequences for how templates and delays work.

Field writes do not go through the Review Queue

Worth being clear about, because it differs from every email step in ORCA.

Emails queued by an automation land in the Review Queue and wait for a human to approve them. Update a field and Raise a to-do do not. They apply as soon as the automation runs, with no approval step and no undo.

This is deliberate: a field write is reversible by editing the record, and a to-do is closable, whereas an email cannot be recalled once sent. It does mean a badly aimed escalation clock can reassign a lot of records overnight, so it is worth checking the trigger config against a section you know before switching a new one on.

Step order decides who gets the to-do

If one automation reassigns a record and then raises a to-do, the order of those two steps changes who the to-do goes to.

Each step reads the record as it stands at that moment, not as it stood when the record first matched. So:

Reassign, then raise a to-do: the to-do goes to the new owner. Nearly always what you want.
Raise a to-do, then reassign: the to-do goes to whoever let the record go cold.

Both are legitimate. Just pick on purpose rather than by accident.

How often it runs

Record automations are evaluated once a night, at 01:00. They are not instant: a record that goes stale during the day is picked up on the next run.

A record is not acted on twice for the same reason. ORCA records the exact date value that caused the match, so a record that is still stale tomorrow night is left alone. If that date changes and the record later goes stale again, it becomes eligible again. In practice this means a lead that gets contacted, then neglected for another week, escalates a second time, which is the behaviour you want, while a lead nobody ever touches does not generate a fresh to-do every morning.

A worked example

Escalating a lead that has gone quiet:

Trigger: Escalation clock on the Leads section, counting days since Last Contacted, 7 days, after that date has passed. Status field: Lead Status. Hold until: Callback Date.
Step 1: Update a field. Set Sales Person Assigned To to your pooled owner.
Step 2: Raise a to-do. Title "Lead has gone quiet, pick it up". Assign to the person in Sales Person Assigned To, so it follows the reassignment from step 1. Due 0 days.

Any open lead untouched for a week, with no callback date in the future, moves to the pool and the new owner gets a to-do the same morning.

Giving a month's notice on a renewal:

Trigger: Escalation clock on the Contracts section, counting days since Renewal Date, 30 days, before that date arrives. Status field: Contract Status.
Step 1: Raise a to-do. Title "Renewal due in a month". Assign to the person in Account Manager. Due 0 days.

Sequences for email sequences and the triggers that drive them
Overview & Templates for email templates, the Review Queue, and send pacing
Assignable To-Dos for what happens to a to-do once it has been raised
Working with Records for records and the fields these automations read and write