Creating and managing automations in Engage

Tech admin, Business admin

Gong Engage*

Automations help you manage your sales engagement processes at scale. To keep track of your automations, go to the Automations page. This centralized view allows you to view and edit all of your automations in one place and see where and how they’re being used.

Automations can be applied to company flows. They cannot be applied to personal flows.

How to create automations

Create an automation from the Automations page

Engage > Automations

To create an automation that can be applied to company flows:

1. Click Add automation at the top right. Give the automation a name and description.

2. Click Add trigger to specify when the automation should fire and select the CRM entity you want to use to trigger the flow. If you use Salesforce, you'll see Contact, Lead, Account, and Opportunity, and if you use HubSpot you’ll see Contact, Account, and Opportunity.
   

3. Select whether the trigger should be when a record of the contact/lead/account object is Created or is updated with. The is updated with option includes all of the fields that are being imported from your CRM into Gong for that object. If you don't see the field you need, you can import the Salesforce field / import the HubSpot field
   

4. Adding conditions under the If section is optional. You can use it to set the conditions for when the automation should fire. Start by selecting the relevant field from the dropdown.
   

5. Options in the dropdown include any imported CRM fields associated with the CRM entity you select for the trigger (the When section). For example, if the trigger you select is “Contact is created”, the fields in the dropdown in the If section are imported CRM fields associated with contacts and accounts. If the trigger you select is “Lead is created”, the fields in the dropdown in the If section are imported CRM fields associated with leads.

   When building your first condition group, you can choose whether the logic for the condition group should be OR or AND. Adjust this by switching the toggle at the top right corner of the condition group box. OR logic means that at least one of the conditions must be true for the overall statement to be true. For example, with the statement “Contact email is A or B or C”, if the contact email is A or B or C, the statement is true. AND logic means that all conditions must be true for the overall statement to be true. For example, “Contact email is A and B and C” is only true if A, B, and C are all true.

   You can also choose whether to apply OR or AND logic between condition groups, not only within an individual condition group. Once you’ve added multiple condition groups, adjust the logic between condition groups by switching the toggle at the top left under Set the operator between the condition groups.

   For free text fields, you can add multiple values. The values will be automatically separated by an “or” condition.
   
   For tailoring an automation to specific team members, you can use user lookup fields within a condition. For example, you could select Owner ID as the field and select one or more team members from the list.
   

6. The Then field defines what happens when the conditions of the automation are met.

   Click Add action > Add contacts to flow or Add leads to flow to select which flow you want people to be added to.
   
   To specify who the to-dos for this flow will be assigned to, select the CRM field that represents the person they should be assigned to from the And assign to dropdown. This also determines who the sender will be for any emails in the flow.
   The person you select for And assign to must have an Engage license or the automation will fail to run.

   
   
   For automations with an Account or Opportunity trigger: specify what the automation should do if it outputs more than one contact, or can’t identify any contacts. If the automation selects a contact without a parent account, the automation will fail to run.
   
   If you select the ask flow assignee to select a contact manually option, the flow assignee will get a to-do prompting them to select a contact from the related account to add to the flow.

   

7. Click Save. The automation won't be activated immediately when you save it, it's off by default until you switch it on to activate it.

Create an automation from a flow page

To create an automation from a flow:

Engage > Flows

1. Next to the rule you want to work on, click Set up automation

2. Follow steps 2-7 above. Switch it on to activate it.

What happens once an automation is activated

Once an automation is activated, view details about each run in the Run History tab. Automations run when a trigger event happens after activation, and only if the conditions are met at that exact moment. If the trigger happened before the automation was turned on, or if the conditions match later without a new trigger, the automation won’t run. In other words, automations don’t retroactively scan for matches or keep re-checking unless something new triggers them.

How to manage your company’s automations

From the Automations page, you can see each automation’s status, who created it, and who last modified it. You can also click to edit, duplicate, or delete an automation.

Use the filters at the top left to find specific automations. You can filter by Created by or Last updated by by typing in names, or filter by Status or Trigger. The Trigger filter lets you select the CRM entity used for the automation’s trigger, which can be Lead, Contact, Account, or Opportunity.

The Trigger column shows which CRM entity the automation uses for the trigger, and whether there are any conditions. The Action column shows what happens when the automation is triggered and the required conditions are met.

How to troubleshoot automations

Understanding how automations work

First, it's important to understand the three components of any automation:

When: The trigger that initiates the automation. For example, a lead is created in the CRM.

If: A set of conditions that filter the trigger. The automation will only proceed if these conditions are met.

Then: The action that Gong performs when the trigger occurs and the conditions are met.

The most critical factor in troubleshooting is timing. Gong first evaluates the trigger. If the trigger event occurs (for example, a contact is created), Gong immediately checks if the conditions are met at that exact moment. If they are, then the action is executed.

Example

An automation is set to trigger when a new contact is created, if the associated "Account Type" field has the value "Customer".

A new contact is created in the CRM. At the moment of creation, the "Account Type" field is still blank. A few minutes later, another workflow updates the "Account Type" to "Customer".

In this scenario, the automation will not run. The conditions were not met at the precise moment the trigger event occurred.

Using the run history to troubleshoot

Engage > Automations > Select an automation > Run history

When an automation doesn't behave as you expect, the Run History page is your primary tool for diagnosing the issue. This page provides a log of every time an automation was triggered.

Once you’re on the Run History page, there are two primary scenarios:

1. If a run appears in the history, it means the automation was successfully triggered. If it didn't perform the action you expected, you can investigate its status (Success or Failure) and outcome.

2. If you don’t see a relevant run, it means the automation never triggered. This indicates that either the defined trigger event didn't happen or the "If" conditions were not met at the time of the trigger.

Finding and filtering runs

To find a specific run, you can use the search bar to look for the name of a contact or lead, or any part of the trigger, condition, or action.

You can also filter the list of runs by:

• Status: See "Success" runs, "Failure" runs, or both.

• Timeframe: Select the timeframe in which the run occurred.

Each column in the Run History table gives you specific information about a run:

• Date and time: When the automation ran.

• Status: Shows whether the run was successful or failed. For runs that failed, you can hover over the to see a reason.
  

• Outcome: Shows what happened as a result of the automation (for example, a to-do was created).

• Contact/lead: The name of the person affected by the automation.

• Job title: The job title of the contact or lead.

• Account: The account associated with the contact or lead.

• Deal: The deal associated with the contact or lead.

• Assignee: The team member the automation is assigned to.

• Trigger: The event that caused the automation to fire.

• Conditions: The requirements that were checked for the automation to fire.

Additional troubleshooting considerations

Automation retry schedule: In many cases, CRM workflows take time to populate key fields after an object is created. To accommodate this, Gong automatically retries flow start automations to ensure they have access to the most up-to-date data.

The retry schedule is as follows:

• First attempt: 2.5 minutes after the trigger applies.

• Second attempt: 5 minutes after the first attempt.

• Final attempt: 2.5 minutes after the second attempt.

To-Do visibility for Account/Opportunity automations: For automations based on an Account or Opportunity object, the action may be to generate a "Start a flow" to-do. This tasks the flow assignee with selecting contacts for the flow. Sometimes, the flow assignee may not see the to-do due to their deal permissions. The Run History will show that the to-do was successfully generated, even if the to-do is not visible to the assignee.

CRM account ID requirement: The CRM must include an Account ID field for all objects except for Leads. CRM change events for any objects that are missing an Account ID will be filtered out before the automation is even evaluated.

About “Add contacts/leads to flow” automations

Flow exclusivity

Automations don’t run in a specific order. If the same lead or contact meets the criteria for more than one automation, Gong will decide which flow to start based on the flow exclusivity settings described below:

• If a contact is in one or more non-exclusive flows and meets the criteria for another non-exclusive flow, the automation will add them to that flow.

• If a contact isn’t in any flow but matches the criteria for both an exclusive and non-exclusive flow, the exclusive flow takes priority.

• If a contact matches the criteria for multiple exclusive flows at the same time, they will be added to one randomly.

• Exclusive flows won’t remove people from other flows.

*The features available to you depend on your company’s plan and your assigned seats.