Automations

Copera Automations is one visual workflow engine that does your repetitive work for you — across boards, documents, chat, and meetings. Every automation is a graph: a single trigger that says when to run, connected to a flow of conditions, actions, and AI steps that decide what happens next. Drag blocks onto a canvas to build it by hand, or simply describe what you want in plain English and let Copera assemble the graph for you.

The same engine that creates a row when a form is submitted can also turn a finished meeting transcript into assigned tasks, draft an email for review, post a summary to a channel, and stamp a completion date — all without anyone lifting a finger. This is the modern, unified automation system in Copera; it replaces the older table-only "when-then" rules with a far more capable graph builder, native AI steps, and meeting automation, all metered transparently with automation credits.

How Automations Work

Think of an automation as a flowchart you can run:

1. One trigger — the event that starts everything. An automation always has exactly one trigger block.
2. A graph of steps — conditions, actions, and AI steps connected by lines (the path the automation follows). Conditions can split the path into a true branch and a false branch, so different things happen depending on the data.
3. An outcome — when the automation finishes, it reports what happened, so you always have visibility into automated changes.

You build this graph in a visual builder — a canvas where each step is a block and each line is a connection. You can drag blocks from a catalog, fill in their inputs, and connect them up. Or you can skip the dragging entirely and describe the automation in plain English; Copera builds the graph for you and you tweak it from there.

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Automations run on your behalf, respecting your permissions. A step that needs read or write access to a board, channel, or document will fail cleanly if that access isn't available — it never bypasses your workspace's rules.

Two Ways to Build

Build on the Visual Canvas

The visual builder is a canvas where you assemble your automation block by block.

1. Open the automation builder for a board (or a meeting channel, document, or chat surface).
2. Add a trigger block — the event that starts the automation.
3. Add condition blocks and connect their true and false outputs to the steps that should run in each case.
4. Add action and AI blocks, and fill in each block's inputs in the node inspector on the side.
5. Watch the live validation — it flags any missing inputs or broken connections in real time so you can fix them before you finish.
6. Publish to turn the automation on.

The builder gives you everything you need in one place:

• A canvas where blocks are nodes and connections are the lines between them.
• A block catalog filtered to the surface you're on — so a board automation shows board blocks, a meeting automation shows meeting blocks, and so on.
• A node inspector that shows each block's inputs and a short description of what it does, right where you're editing it.
• Live validation that highlights problems (a missing field, an unconnected branch) before you publish.

Build by Describing It (AI Builder)

If you'd rather not drag anything, just tell Copera what you want:

1. Open the builder and choose the describe-to-build option.
2. Type what you want in plain English, naming the board, columns, channels, and people involved — for example: "When a form is submitted, create a row in the Leads table and notify the assignee."
3. Copera assembles the matching trigger, condition, and action blocks into a graph, resolves the names you mentioned (it figures out which column "assignee" is, which channel you meant, which person to notify), and returns a short explanation of what it built.
4. Review the generated graph, adjust any block on the canvas, then publish.

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The AI builder is the fastest way to start. Describe the rough idea in one sentence, let Copera lay out the graph, then fine-tune the details visually. You get the speed of plain English with the precision of the canvas.

Triggers — What Starts an Automation

Every automation begins with exactly one trigger. Copera offers a wide range, grouped by what they watch.

Row and Field Triggers

Trigger	Fires when…
Row created	A new row is added to the table.
Row updated	An existing row changes.
Row deleted	A row is removed.
Field changed	A specific column's value changes (or any column changes).

Activity and Form Triggers

Trigger	Fires when…
Comment added	Someone comments on a row. The automation can read the comment's text, author, and time.
Form submitted	A public form is submitted.
Manual action button	Someone clicks an action button you've placed on a row — the automation runs on demand.

Process Triggers

Trigger	Fires when…
Workflow transition completed	A row moves from one status to another through a defined workflow transition.
Approval approved or rejected	A workflow approval is granted or declined.
SLA breached	An SLA timer on a row passes its target and is breached — ideal for escalations and follow-ups.

Time-Based Triggers

Trigger	Fires when…
Date reached	A date field reaches a target moment. You can fire on the date, or a set number of minutes, hours, days, weeks, or months before or after it. This includes "N days after the last comment" for nudges and follow-ups.
Schedule	A repeating schedule fires (for example, every Monday at 9 AM). Available on board, document, and chat surfaces.

Meeting Trigger

Trigger	Fires when…
Transcription complete	A meeting finishes transcribing. This is the starting point for meeting automations that summarize, extract tasks, and notify people.

Communication & Inbound Triggers

Trigger	Fires when…
Chat message received	A message arrives in a chat channel you're watching — start a flow straight from a conversation.
Email received	A new email lands in a connected inbox. Gmail received does the same for a connected Gmail account.
Inbound webhook received	An external system calls in to a unique webhook URL to start the automation — the way to kick off a flow from any tool that can send a request.

Calendar, Booking & Workspace Triggers

Trigger	Fires when…
Calendar event created	A new event is added to a connected calendar.
Booking created	Someone books a time slot through a booking page.
Time entry created	A new time entry is logged on a row.
Workspace member joined	A new member joins the workspace — perfect for onboarding flows.

Conditions and Branching

Conditions decide which way an automation goes. A condition block has a true output and a false output, so you can run different steps depending on the data. Connect downstream blocks to whichever branch should run.

Ways to Check the Data

• Compare two values — with operators including equals, not equals, contains, does not contain, greater than, less than, greater or equal, less or equal, starts with, ends with, is empty, and is not empty.
• Row filter — check whether the triggering row matches a set of filters, requiring all of them or any of them, using the same filtering you already know from Filters & Sorting.
• Changed from → to — branch on a field's before and after values (for example, only continue if Status changed from "In Review" to "Done").
• Actor is — branch on who triggered the automation: a specific person, another automation, the system, or an external source.
• Formula condition — evaluate a Copera formula against the row and branch on the result.

Combining Checks

Group several checks together with AND (all must be true) or OR (any can be true) logic to express more sophisticated rules. Each condition block then sends the flow down its true path or its false path.

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Use a condition right after your trigger to keep automations focused. For example, trigger on any row update, then add a condition that only continues when Priority equals High — so the rest of the automation only runs for the rows that matter.

Actions — What an Automation Can Do

Actions are the steps that change something. You can chain as many as you need, in any order, across any branch.

Row and Field Actions

Action	What it does
Create row	Add a new row to this table or another table.
Update row	Change values on a row.
Duplicate row	Copy a row.
Move row	Move a row to another table.
Find rows	Look up rows that match a set of filters, so later steps can act on the rows it returns.
Set field	Set a column to a value.
Clear field	Empty a column.
Copy field	Copy one column's value into another.
Add / remove value	Add or remove a single value on a multi-value column (labels, links) without disturbing the rest.
Increment number	Add to a number column.
Assign user(s)	Add specific people to a people column.
Assign triggering user	Add whoever triggered the automation to a people column.

Date Actions

Action	What it does
Set date to now	Stamp the current date and time.
Set date relative	Set a date relative to another date or to the row's creation time (for example, "due date = created date + 7 days").

Linked-Row and SLA Actions

Action	What it does
Update linked row	Change a related row in another table.
SLA timer control	Start, pause, or stop an SLA timer on the row.

Communication Actions

Action	What it does
Send notification	Send an in-app notification to specific people.
Send or draft email	Send an email, or prepare it as a draft for review first.
Post channel message	Post a message into a chat channel.
Send direct message	Send a direct message to specific people.
Call webhook	Send an outbound request to an external system.

Document Action

Action	What it does
Create document	Create a new document, optionally built from meeting-derived content.

External Apps and Connectors

Beyond the built-in Call webhook action, automations can publish and sync to the outside apps your team already uses through connectors — for example, publishing a post to WordPress or a social platform, adding an event to Google Calendar, appending a row to Google Sheets, sending a Slack or WhatsApp message, creating a GitHub issue, or updating a HubSpot contact. You connect each app once in your workspace, then drop its action into any automation.

See Connectors for the full catalog of external apps and what each one can do.

AI Steps

AI steps let an automation read, write, and reason about text:

AI step	What it does
Generate	Write new text from a prompt.
Summarize	Condense long text into a short summary.
Classify	Sort text into labels you define.
Extract	Pull structured fields out of free-form text.
Sentiment	Detect the tone of text.
Translate	Translate text into another language.
Data enrich	Enrich a value with AI — fill in or expand a field automatically.
Web research	Research a topic on the web and return a cited answer.
Generate image	Create an image from a text prompt.
Text-to-speech	Turn text into spoken audio.
Load meeting context	Pull a transcript's summary, action items, or details for a later AI step to use.
AI agent step (meeting surface)	Run a multi-step assistant that can look up boards and their structure, find rows and the right people to assign, create or update rows, create documents, post messages, and draft or send emails — then return a report of everything it created and changed.

There's also a no-op step for testing a graph without performing a real action.

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The AI agent step is available on the meeting surface, where it can act across your boards, documents, and channels to turn a conversation into finished work. Other AI steps (generate, summarize, classify, extract, sentiment, translate, data enrich, web research, generate image, and text-to-speech) are available wherever they make sense.

The Meeting Automation Flow

Meeting automations use the very same engine — they just start from a different trigger and end with meeting-shaped output.

A typical meeting automation:

1. Triggers when a transcription completes.
2. Loads the transcript (optionally) so the AI step has the full context.
3. Runs an AI step to summarize, extract action items, or reason about the conversation.
4. Delivers an output, which can be:
   • A summary of the meeting.
   • Extracted tasks turned into rows in a board.
   • A draft email or a sent email.
   • A channel message.
   • A document.

Choosing How It's Delivered

For each output you choose a delivery mode:

Delivery mode	What happens
Automatic	The output is created and sent right away.
Draft	The output is prepared as a draft for someone to review before it goes out.
Approval	The automation pauses at an approval step until someone approves, then continues.

Choosing the Audience and Destination

You decide who the output is for and where it lands:

• Audience — internal members, external participants, or specific users, teams, or email addresses.
• Destination — the board and table for new rows, the channel for messages, or the folder for documents.

Rows that AI creates can be auto-marked with a status of your choosing (for example, "AI-Created") so they're easy to spot and review.

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Meeting bots can run these automations across every transcription in your workspace, or you can scope them to a single channel. That means recurring formats — "every sales call gets a summary emailed to the rep" — just happen automatically after each meeting.

Comments and Activity Signals

Automations are aware of the conversation on your rows:

• Comment added is a trigger, and the automation can read the comment's content, author, and time. Use it to notify a person who was @mentioned, escalate when negative feedback comes in, or repost an important comment to a channel.
• "N days after last comment" is available as a time-based trigger — perfect for gentle nudges and stale-item reminders ("if no one's commented on this deal in 7 days, ping the owner").

Meeting Transcript Extraction

After a meeting is transcribed, Copera can automatically pull structure out of it, which your automations can act on:

• Chapters — topic segments with timestamps.
• Action items — tasks with suggested assignees.
• Key questions and decisions — the important moments of the conversation.
• Topics — automatic grouping of related meetings.

Each of these shows a processing status (pending → processing → completed or failed) right in the meeting note, so you always know when the AI-extracted content is ready. See AI Summaries for more on what transcripts produce.

Automation Credits

Automations are metered with automation credits, so usage stays transparent.

What Uses Credits

• Standard action steps consume credits — creating a row, sending an email or message, calling a webhook, and sending a notification.
• Triggers, conditions, and no-op steps don't consume credits.
• AI text and AI agent steps draw from your AI usage rather than from action credits.

The Usage Dashboard

A usage dashboard gives you full visibility:

• Totals — runs, steps, and cost over a period.
• Breakdown — usage by individual automation and by block type, so you can see exactly what's spending.
• Daily trend — a chart of usage day by day.

Spend Caps

You can set a per-automation spend cap so an individual automation never runs past a limit you choose. If a run would exceed the cap, it stops cleanly and reports it.

Run Outcomes You'll See

Every run reports an outcome, so there's never any mystery about what happened:

Outcome	Meaning
Completed	Every step ran successfully.
Partial success	Some steps ran, some did not.
Skipped — insufficient credits	There weren't enough credits to run.
Stopped — budget cap reached	A spend cap stopped the run mid-way.
Waiting for review	The run paused at a draft or approval step.
Rejected	An approver declined an approval step.
Failed	A step couldn't finish — a missing permission, an action error, or an AI error.

Example Automations

Here are real patterns you can build today.

Form → Row → Notify

When a public form is submitted, create a row and tell the right person.

1. Trigger: Form submitted.
2. Action: Create row in your intake table, mapping the form answers to columns.
3. Action: Send notification to the row's assignee.

Meeting Transcript → Assigned Tasks

Turn every meeting into a tidy list of assigned, trackable tasks.

1. Trigger: Transcription complete.
2. AI step: Extract action items (with suggested assignees).
3. Action: Create a row in the Tasks table for each item, assign the right people, and mark each row "AI-Created."

Status Done → Stamp Date + Announce

Close the loop automatically when work is finished.

1. Trigger: Field changed (Status).
2. Condition: Changed-to value is "Done."
3. Action: Set the Completed Date to now.
4. Action: Post a message to the team channel celebrating the win.

Reminder Before a Due Date

Never let a deadline sneak up on anyone.

1. Trigger: Date reached — 3 days before the Due Date.
2. Action: Send (or draft) a reminder email to the assignee.

@Mention in a Comment → Notify

Make sure people see when they're called into a discussion.

1. Trigger: Comment added.
2. Condition: Comment contains an @mention.
3. Action: Send a notification to the mentioned person.

Meeting Summary → Channel or Email

Keep everyone in the loop after every call.

1. Trigger: Transcription complete.
2. AI step: Summarize the meeting.
3. Action: Post the summary to the meeting channel — or email it to participants — delivered automatically, as a draft, or behind an approval.

Settings and Configuration

Setting	What it controls
Trigger	The single event that starts the automation.
Block inputs	Each block's own fields (columns, recipients, values, prompts), edited in the node inspector.
Branch connections	Which steps run on a condition's true path versus its false path.
Spend cap	A per-automation limit that stops a run before it exceeds your chosen amount.
Meeting output type	The shape of a meeting automation's result: summary, rows/tasks, draft email, sent email, channel message, or document.
Delivery mode	Whether a meeting output is sent automatically, prepared as a draft, or routed through an approval step.
Audience	Who the output is for: internal members, external participants, or specific users, teams, or emails.
Destination	Where the output lands: a board/table for rows, a channel for messages, or a folder for documents.

Tips and Best Practices

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Start with the AI builder, then refine on the canvas. Describe the automation in one plain-English sentence to get a working graph in seconds, then open each block to fine-tune the details.

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Filter early with a condition. Put a condition right after a broad trigger (like "row updated") so the automation only continues for the rows you actually care about. This keeps runs efficient and predictable.

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Use draft or approval delivery for anything that leaves the workspace. For AI-generated emails or external messages, choose draft or approval mode so a human reviews the wording before it's sent.

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Mark AI-created rows with a status. When automations create rows from meeting transcripts, set a status like "AI-Created" so your team can quickly review and confirm them.

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Set a spend cap on busy automations. If an automation runs frequently, give it a per-automation spend cap so it can never run past a limit you're comfortable with — and check the usage dashboard to see where credits go.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I build an automation in Copera?

Open the automation builder for your board, meeting channel, document, or chat surface and either drag blocks onto the canvas or describe what you want in plain English. Every automation starts with one trigger block, then connects to any number of condition, action, and AI blocks. Fill in each block's inputs in the inspector, watch the live validation for missing fields, and publish to turn the automation on.

Can I create an automation just by describing it?

Yes. Open the builder and choose the describe-to-build option, then type what you want in plain English — for example, "When a form is submitted, create a row and notify the assignee." Copera assembles the matching trigger, condition, and action blocks into a visual graph, resolves the column names, channels, and people you mention, and returns a short explanation of what it built. You can then adjust any block on the canvas before publishing.

Can automations turn a meeting transcript into tasks?

Yes. A meeting automation triggers when a transcription finishes, loads the transcript, and runs an AI step that extracts action items. It can create a row for each task in a chosen table, assign the right people, and mark the rows with a status such as "AI-Created." The same automation can also post a summary to the meeting channel, email participants, or create a document — delivered automatically, as a draft for review, or behind an approval step.

What are automation credits?

Automation credits measure how much work your automations do. Standard action steps — creating a row, sending an email or message, calling a webhook, or sending a notification — consume credits, while triggers, conditions, and test steps do not. A usage dashboard shows your totals, a breakdown by automation and block type, and a daily trend, and you can set a spend cap on any individual automation so it never runs past a limit you choose.

What happens when an automation runs?

Every run reports an outcome you can see: completed (every step ran), partial success (some steps ran, some did not), skipped — insufficient credits, stopped — budget cap reached, waiting for review (paused at a draft or approval step), rejected (an approver declined), or failed (a permission, action, or AI step could not finish). These outcomes appear alongside the run so you always know what happened.

What can trigger an automation?

Automations can start when a row is created, updated, or deleted; when a specific field changes; when a comment is added; when a public form is submitted; when a workflow status transition or approval completes; when an SLA timer is breached; when someone clicks a manual action button; when a date is reached (including a set time before or after a date, or a number of days after the last comment); on a repeating schedule; when a time entry is logged; when a chat message is received; when an email arrives (including Gmail); when an inbound webhook is received; when a calendar event is created; when a booking is made; when a new member joins the workspace; or when a meeting transcription completes. Each automation has exactly one trigger.

Can one automation branch into different paths?

Yes. Condition blocks branch into a true path and a false path, so different steps run depending on the data. You can compare values with operators like equals, contains, or greater-than, filter on the triggering row, branch on what a field changed from and to, branch on who triggered the automation, or evaluate a formula — and combine several checks with AND/OR groups.

What's the difference between automations and workflows?

Workflows govern how a row's status is allowed to move — which transitions are permitted, who can make them, and what approvals they require. Automations are broader event-driven flows that can run on many different triggers (including when a workflow transition or approval completes) and perform a wide range of actions across boards, documents, chat, and meetings. They complement each other: a workflow controls the path, and an automation can react to each step of it.

Do automations work for documents and chat too?

Yes. Although boards are the most common surface, the same engine powers automations on documents and chat as well — for example, scheduled automations can run on those surfaces — so you build them the same way no matter where they live.

Related Features

• Meeting Transcription — Capture every meeting as text so automations can summarize it and extract tasks.
• AI Summaries — See what Copera pulls out of a transcript: summaries, action items, decisions, and chapters.
• Workflows — Control how statuses move with transitions and approvals that automations can trigger on.
• Formulas — Build computed values you can use inside automation conditions.
• Filters & Sorting — The same filtering used in automation conditions and row filters.
• SLA Tracking — Start, pause, and stop time-tracking timers from automation actions.
• Boards Overview — Learn how tables, columns, and views fit together.