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Automate your app

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Your app can do something on its own when it receives a submission. You pick a ready-made automation, fill in a couple of blanks, and turn it on. Or skip the picking: describe what you want in plain words and the AI chooses the automation and fills in the blanks for you.

There is no flow chart to draw and nothing to configure beyond the blanks. If you want to build your own logic, with conditions, delays, approvals or webhooks, that is Workflow Automation, a separate feature on Pro and above.

What you can turn on

Section titled “What you can turn on”

Email me when someone submits. When a row lands in the list you choose, we send an email to the address you choose. Useful the moment your app has a form and you would rather not keep checking it.

Copy new submissions into another list. When a row is added to one list, it is copied into another list in the same project. Columns are matched by name, so a Name column in one list fills the Name column in the other. Anything the second list has no column for is simply left out, which means the two lists do not have to match exactly.

Daily summary of new submissions. Once a day, at an hour you pick, we email how many new submissions arrived in the last 24 hours. On a day when nothing arrived, nothing is sent, so it stays worth reading.

Describe it instead of picking

Section titled “Describe it instead of picking”

Above the template picker sits a describe box. Type what you want, for example Email me when someone submits the signup form, and select Draft it. The AI picks the matching automation and fills in the blanks below, then shows Here is what that would do so you can check it. If it looks right, select Turn it on, the same button you would have used anyway.

A few things worth knowing about how it behaves:

  • Drafting creates nothing. The AI only fills in the controls. Nothing runs until you press Turn it on, and you can change any blank first.
  • The description you get back cannot lie. It is generated from the chosen automation’s own template, so it describes what will actually be built rather than what the model claims.
  • Edit a blank and the description disappears. It was only true for the exact draft it described, so once you change something, the controls below are the truth.
  • It only picks from what exists. It chooses among your project’s real lists; it will not invent one. If nothing in the template set covers what you asked for, or the request is too vague, it says so and you can pick manually instead.
  • Limits. Drafting draws on your workspace’s AI token budget and is capped at 20 drafts an hour per workspace. Picking manually is never limited.

Turn one on

Section titled “Turn one on”

  1. Open your app in Build.

  2. Select Automations in the tool strip under the preview. If you cannot see it, scroll the strip sideways, since it holds a fair number of tools now.

  3. Describe what you want and select Draft it, or choose what should happen from the picker yourself.

  4. Check the blanks, or fill them in. For the email automation that is which list to watch and where to send the message; for the daily summary you also pick the hour.

  5. Select Turn it on.

Your automation appears in the list underneath, and starts working immediately.

Pause, resume or remove

Section titled “Pause, resume or remove”

Every automation you have made is listed under the template picker, with how many times it has run.

  • Pause stops it running without deleting it. Resume whenever you like.
  • Remove deletes it. You can always add it again from the template.

What time the daily summary arrives

Section titled “What time the daily summary arrives”

The hour you pick is your workspace’s local time, using the timezone set on the workspace. If no timezone is set, the hour is UTC, so set one first if that matters to you.

What you need

Section titled “What you need”

The list your automation watches has to belong to a project. Apps built in Onplana Maker always do, so this only comes up if you are working with a list created outside a project.

You also need permission to publish the app. If you can publish it, you can automate it.

How often it can run

Section titled “How often it can run”

Automations are subject to a fair-use limit, so an app receiving an unusual burst of submissions will not send an unbounded number of emails. The limits scale with your plan and are set well above what a normal app does, so you are unlikely to meet them.

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