Your platform ships as one connected machine rather than a pile of plugins, so things that happen in one system can trigger actions in another automatically. Two engines handle this: FluentCRM automations (everything around contacts and email) and Uncanny Automator (cross-system recipes between your store, courses, community and more).
The pattern: trigger → actions
Every automation is the same sentence: when X happens, do Y (and Z).
- When someone buys the course product → enroll them in the course, tag them “customer”, start the onboarding email sequence.
- When a student completes the course → send the certificate email, invite them to the community, start the “next offer” sequence a week later.
- When a subscription payment fails → tag “payment-issue”, email a card-update link.
- When someone fills the contact form → create the contact, tag by interest, notify you.
Where to build what
- FluentCRM → Automations: when the trigger or the action involves contacts, tags or emails. This covers most of what a course business needs: purchase triggers, form triggers, tag-based sequences.
- Automator → Add New Recipe: when you’re connecting systems beyond email: LearnDash events, WooCommerce events, community actions, user account changes. Pick a trigger from one system, actions from any other.
Rule of thumb: start in FluentCRM; reach for Automator when FluentCRM doesn’t see the event you need.
Build your first one (10 minutes)
The purchase automation is the one every business needs on day one:
- FluentCRM → Automations → New, trigger: WooCommerce “order completed” for your product.
- Action: apply tag customer-.
- Action: send a welcome email: where to log in, where to start, where to get help.
(Course enrollment itself is handled by the product-course link. See Sell your first product.)
Or just describe it to your AI
Automations are a good fit for the AI layer. Describe the outcome, for example “When someone finishes the pricing course, wait 3 days and send them an invitation to book a call”, and your assistant builds the automation for you and shows you what it created. See Connect your AI.
One caution
An automation runs every time its trigger fires, so a mistake in it repeats too. Test each new automation with a real test contact before trusting it, and give everything a descriptive name (“Purchase → onboarding (Course X)”) so you can still tell later what it does.
When an automation doesn’t fire
Four checks find nearly every case:
- Is it active? A paused automation looks identical to a broken one.
- Did the trigger happen as a new event? Triggers fire on the event, not the state. “Tag applied” runs only when the tag is newly added; contacts who already had the tag before the automation existed won’t enter it.
- Is the contact subscribed? Unsubscribed or pending contacts are skipped by email steps.
- Did it fire but the email never arrived? Check the automation’s activity and FluentCRM’s email log. If the log says sent but inboxes are empty, that’s deliverability: our side. Open a ticket with the automation name and a recipient address.
