Automation rules

Where: Communications → Automation Rules

What causes a message to be sent.

What a rule is

A trigger connected to a message. Someone registers and gets a confirmation; an achievement unlocks and they hear about it; a fundraising milestone is passed and they are congratulated.

Once configured, these run without you. That is the point, and it is also the risk: a badly configured rule sends badly configured email to everyone, repeatedly, and you find out from the replies.

Review the active rules before launch

Go through what is switched on and, for each, ask what it will actually send and how often.

Pay attention to anything firing per activity. On an event where participants ride five times a week, a per-activity email is five messages a week each. Multiply by your field size before enabling it.

Testing a rule

A test send delivers a real message so you can check it end to end — sender, content, links, appearance on a phone.

Use it. A rule that is correctly configured and produces an email with a broken link is still a broken rule, and the trigger is the part you cannot easily rehearse.

Conditions on rules

Some messages are gated on conditions beyond the obvious trigger.

A gated message can be silently switched off

A fundraising message can be conditional on a qualification setting that is disabled for your event. The rule looks enabled, the trigger fires, and nothing sends.

If a message you expect is not arriving, check the logs first: they tell you whether it was attempted at all, which separates a gating problem from a delivery problem.

Duplicates

Where more than one system can send the same message, the platform records what has already gone out to avoid sending twice.

If participants report duplicates, that is worth reporting rather than working around — do not solve it by disabling a rule you need.

What to switch on

A defensible starting set:

• Registration confirmation — always.
• A pre-event reminder — shortly before the start.
• Achievement unlocks — for the significant ones only.
• A results message — when standings are final.

Add more once you can see engagement in the logs. Start quiet; it is much easier to add a message than to apologise for a fortnight of noise.