Automations in LaunchBay

From the moment a client is ready to sign, through feedback and delivery, to final approval and launch, LaunchBay's built-in automations help eliminate manual tasks and streamline client and team collaboration in your projects.

This article will explain how LaunchBay's built-in automations work and provide instructions for creating them in your projects and templates.

How Automations Work

LaunchBay's built-in automations enable you to specify an action (or actions) that automatically take place when other events (called "triggers") occur in one of your projects or templates.

How to Create Automations

Whether you create automations in active projects or templates, the process is virtually identical. To create automations, open a project or template and click "Automations" in the top navigation bar.

On this page, you can create new automations and view any existing automations you or your team members added to project or template already.

If you're new to automations, LaunchBay provides pre-built templates to help you get started. You can locate these in the Automation Page sidebar and click "Use Automation" to add it to your project or template.

Step-by-Step Instructions

If you'd like to create an automation from scratch, click the "Add new" button to bring up the automation builder. The instructions below will walk you through each step.

Step 1: Configure Trigger Event(s)

Every automation in LaunchBay starts with at least one trigger—an event that occurs within a project and initiates the automation workflow. You can set up a single trigger or use multiple triggers. If you add more than one, all trigger conditions must be met for the automation to run.

When configuring trigger events, you must specify:

• Whether the trigger should apply to a task, stage, form block, or project
• The specific task, stage, or form block you want the trigger to reference
• A condition that must be met in the task, stage, or form block you referenced for the trigger to fire (for example, a specific task/stage being completed, activated, or archived)

Step 2: Add a Delay (Optional)

While optional, adding delays to your automation workflows can be especially helpful for projects with a defined timeline. Delays allow you to schedule actions more strategically—ensuring tasks and updates happen at the right moment in your project workflows.

By default, the Delay field in new automations is set to “None.” To add a delay, simply enter a number and choose the time unit (hours, days, weeks, or months) from the dropdowns.

Here are a few examples of how delays can be used:

• Trigger a task prompting clients to schedule a check-in call after they've worked with you for X weeks
• Archive completed tasks or stages after Y days to keep your client’s portal clean and focused
• Give your team Z hours to customize portal pages before clients can access them

By default, the Delay field in new automations is set to “None.” To add a delay, simply enter a number and choose the time unit (hours, days, weeks, or months) from the dropdowns.

Step 3: Add Automation Action(s)

The final step before saving your automation is to define at least one action, meaning what you want LaunchBay to do automatically when the trigger conditions are met. LaunchBay supports actions such as sending email notifications, activating or completing tasks, moving or updating stages, importing tasks and stages, showing or hiding portal pages, adding or removing project tags, and adding or removing task tags.

Depending on the action you select, LaunchBay will prompt you to provide additional details—such as the name of a task or stage to activate, or the email address for a notification—before you can save the automation.

Reviewing & Managing Automations

The Automations page gives you full visibility and control over every automation in your project or template.

Use filters at the top of the Rules page to quickly narrow down automations by trigger type or action type — helpful when you're working with a large number of automations and need to find a specific one fast.

To view the full configuration of any automation, click "Details" on that automation row. To take action on a specific automation, click the three dots on the right side of the row — from there you can edit it, view its individual run history, or delete it.

History Tab

The History tab keeps a chronological log of every automation that has run in the project — including what triggered it, what actions were executed, and when. Just click the history item to view more details.  Use it to confirm automations are firing as expected or to track down any issues without digging through individual records.

Deleting Tasks or Stages Used in Automations

If you attempt to delete a task or stage that is currently referenced as a trigger or action in an automation, LaunchBay will prompt you to confirm the deletion and warn you that removing it may break the associated automation. Review your automations before confirming to avoid disrupting your workflows.