How do Scribble automations work?
An automation is a saved rule: who it watches, what it sends, and what it may spend. A scheduler runs every rule once a day and creates one card for each person whose date is near enough to act on and still far enough ahead to be made in time. You set no dates and no timings — Scribble works those out. Nothing sends the moment you save a rule; it joins the next daily run.
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#What a rule is made of
A rule answers three questions: who it watches, what it sends, and what it may spend. There is nothing else to configure — in particular there is no timing to get right, because a customer cannot be expected to know how long a card takes to make and post.
| Field | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Trigger | What the rule watches. See triggers. | Birthday |
| List | Who it watches. Blank means everyone in the address book. Lists change and the rule follows them. | Everyone |
| Message | The text written on the card, with merge fields. | Empty |
| Design | Which card. Blank uses your organization's default. | Default card |
| Handwriting | Which hand the cards are written in. Leave it on your house handwriting and the rule follows it whenever you change it in Settings; pick another and this rule keeps that one. | Your house handwriting |
| Signed by | What {{sender_name}} becomes. | Your organization name |
| Cap for the year | The most cards this rule may create in a calendar year. | None |
| On / off | Whether the daily sweep includes it. | On |
#What happens on a run
Work out which occasions to act on
Every run looks at a band of upcoming dates. It starts at the soonest date we could still get a card to from today, and reaches roughly two weeks out. Scribble derives that band from how long the floor actually takes, so a rule cannot be set up to produce a card that arrives late.
The band is several days wide, which is also the safety net: if a run is ever missed, the next one still covers those occasions rather than losing them.
Find everyone whose date matches
Only contacts in the rule's list, and only ones that actually carry the date the trigger needs. A birthday rule cannot match a contact with no birthday on file.
Check the reasons not to send
In order: the annual cap, the credit balance, the do-not-mail list, and whether the message has a value for every merge field this person uses. Each skip is recorded with a reason against that person.
Claim the occurrence
Before an order exists, the rule inserts a claim row for
(rule, contact, occurrence date). A unique constraint on those three columns means a second attempt collides and stops. This is the entire duplicate guard, and it is enforced by the database, not by code that could race.Create the card
An ordinary order, handed to the same pipeline a consumer checkout uses. One credit is spent, the card gets a code, six production steps and a set of derived dates, and it appears on Sent cards next to everything else.
#When the card arrives
The date on the contact — the birthday, the anniversary, the renewal — is the date the card should arrive by. Scribble works backwards from it and posts the card so it lands in a four to five day window ending on that date. We cannot promise an exact day, because once a card is with USPS the last mile is not ours to control, so we aim to be early rather than late. A card that turns up two days before a birthday is a good card; one that turns up the day after is not.
That is why there is nothing to set. Full arithmetic in arrival windows.
#Testing a rule without waiting for a date
Use Run now on the automation. It reports who it matched, who it would write to and who it skipped and why. Read the skip reasons before you trust a rule: no credits left, on your do-not-mail list and the message needs {{company}}, which this contact has no value for are all things you would rather find out now than in December.
#Common questions
- How often does the scheduler run?
- Once a day. A rule saved this afternoon joins tomorrow's run.
- Can a person get two cards from one rule?
- No. Every card claims a unique row for the rule, the contact and the occurrence date before the order exists, so a retry, an overlapping run or a manual Run now cannot produce a second card for the same occurrence.
- Can a person get two cards from two different rules?
- Yes. The guard is per rule. If someone is on both a birthday list and a client thank-you list and both fire in the same week, they get two cards. That is usually what you want, but it is worth checking overlapping lists.
- Can I choose how far ahead a rule fires?
- No, and there is nothing to choose. Scribble works out how far ahead to act from how long a card actually takes to make and post, and it reaches far enough ahead that the card lands in the days running up to the date rather than after it.
- What happens if I run out of credits mid-run?
- Anyone not yet written to is skipped with a reason. They are picked up on the next run once you top up, as long as their date is still far enough ahead for the card to be made and delivered in time.
- Do automations cost more than campaigns?
- No. One credit is one card either way, at the rate you bought your credits at.
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