Actions

Under Then, a rule does its actions in order. Click Add an action to add one: the picker is grouped by area, and you can type in Find an action to filter it and press Enter to add the highlighted one. Actions you may not add are locked, saying why. Then drag the handle on the left of an action to move it, and use the cross to remove it. Click an action's title to fold it away.

How actions run#

• Actions run one after another, and each sees what the previous one did: after Create a ticket, later actions can note, assign or reply on that ticket.
• If an action fails, the actions after it are skipped and the rule's owner is told (at most once an hour per rule).
• If an action has nothing to act on (a note when there is no ticket yet, a script on a device with no agent) it is skipped with the reason. That is not a failure.
• Every text box takes placeholders. See Conditions and placeholders.

Tickets#

Warning: Reply to the customer sends real email to real customers. Build and test the rule in dry run first, and keep the wording neutral: it goes out under the owner's name.

Records#

Devices#

A rule that runs a script as system on more than 25 devices needs an administrator as its owner. Script and software actions are also checked against the Scripts and Software modules' own permissions each time they run.

Microsoft 365#

The Microsoft 365 group has Microsoft 365: act on an account and Microsoft 365: change a user (reset a password sent by text or a one-time link, sign out everywhere, block or unblock sign-in, groups, out of office, licences). Below them are groups of single steps:

Each step shows its risk (Change or Destructive) and Asks for approval where a rule owned by someone who is not an administrator sends it to an administrator first. Steps find users, groups and mailboxes by name or address, only ever in the tenant of the customer the rule ran for, and every change they make is listed on the run with Undo where it can be undone. See Microsoft 365 steps and the leaver bundle and Making changes safely.

Notify#

Notify people#

Sends a message with a Title, a Severity and a Message to:

• People by name
• everyone with a role (Every administrators, Every technicians and so on)
• Whoever is on call
• The ticket's assignee
• The rule's owner
• Shared channels: Teams and Slack channels set up in Settings > Channels

Each person gets it on the channels they chose for Messages from rules in their own notification settings, and the inbox always keeps a copy. See Notifications and channels.

Send email to, and Email or text a contact#

Send email to sends an email to addresses you give. Email or text a contact emails or texts the requester, the primary contact, a contact you choose or an address. Texts use your SMS channel.

Page whoever is on call#

Pages the on-call person with a Title, Message and Severity, through an Escalation policy (or the default one), escalating until someone acknowledges. If on-call is not set up, the action is skipped. See On-call rotas and paging.

Show on TV screens#

Puts a message, an alarm, a caller card, a camera, a dashboard or a picture over the dashboards on chosen TV screens, for a time, until the alert clears or until someone dismisses it. See TV screens, doorbells and phone calls.

Sales#

In the MSP edition, Give the lead or deal to sets the owner of a lead, deal or sales task, Add a sales task adds a task on the lead or deal (due in a number of days, for its owner, a person or the rule's owner) that shows in My sales day, and Enrol in a sales sequence starts a contact on one of your sequences. Notify people can also tell The lead's or deal's owner. See Form triggers and the ready-made starter and leaver rules.

Alerts#

Raising an alert from a scheduled or metric rule is a neat way to turn your own checks into first-class alerts.

Sign-up addresses#

For rules on Mail arrives at a sign-up address: Forward the sign-up message sends it to the customer's primary contact, a chosen contact or an address (a message with a code or sign-in link only when the step allows it and the rule's owner may see codes), and Delete the sign-up message removes noise such as newsletters (put it last). See Sign-up mail: codes, links and renewals.

Webhooks#

Send a webhook POSTs JSON to another system: a status page, a chat tool, a PSA or your own scripts.

1. Enter the Address. It must be a public https address. Placeholders are allowed and are URL-encoded.
2. Choose the Body: The standard event (Tenvara's own JSON describing the event, the subject and the rule) or My own JSON, where placeholder values are escaped for you.
3. Add Headers if the receiver needs them, for example an API key.
4. Set a Signing secret so the receiver can check the request came from you. Generate makes one in the standard format (whsec_ and a key).

How webhooks behave:

• Signed: with a secret, each request carries the Standard Webhooks headers webhook-id, webhook-timestamp and webhook-signature, so the receiver can check it with any Standard Webhooks library and reject old timestamps.
• Secrets stay secret: the signing secret and header values are stored encrypted and never shown again. The builder shows "Saved (hidden): leave blank to keep"; leave it blank to keep the saved value, or type a new one.
• Retried: timeouts, 408, 429 and 5xx answers are tried again, 4 attempts by default with waits of 1, 5 and 30 minutes. The run waits in the log between attempts. Change this on the General tab of Settings > Channels.
• Safe: private, loopback and link-local addresses (which include cloud metadata services) are refused, every address the name resolves to is checked, and redirects are not followed.

Projects#

Create a project, Add a project task, Update the project task and Update the project let a rule start or move project work.

Flow#

Wait#

Wait has five kinds:

• Wait for a number of minutes or hours.
• Until business hours: until your business hours next start, skipping public holidays. If it is business hours already, the rule carries on.
• Until a time of day, on chosen weekdays, in a time zone.
• Until a date: a date and time, usually from a placeholder such as a form's last working day ({{form.values.last_day}}), in the customer's business hours time zone unless you choose one. A date already passed carries on at once; a value that is not a date fails the step and says so.
• Until something happens: until conditions hold, such as the device coming back online, the alert clearing or the customer replying. It is checked every minute, for at most a time limit you set (up to 7 days). Choose what happens if it never does: Stop the rule or Carry on. With When it happens set to stop, the later steps run only if it did not happen, which is how "server offline: wait 2 hours, else page on-call" works.

Conditions under If are checked once, before the first action. Use Until something happens when a later step depends on something changing.

Ask for approval#

Ask for approval stops the run until someone approves. Choose who approves (people, roles, teams, or the ticket's assignee), how long they have (1 hour to 30 days) and, if nobody decides in time, whether the rule stops or carries on. The rule's owner is never one of the approvers unless Owners may approve their own rules' runs is on in Settings > Channels, on the General tab.

Approvers get the request in the Approvals inbox, by email and in Teams or Slack, with Approve and Reject. The run page shows the request and each decision. Rejected, the rule stops and the run says who rejected it and why. Automations never approve anything themselves. See Approvals.

With Ask for approval before risky steps on in the same settings, rules owned by someone who is not an administrator must have an approval step before running a script, deploying software or changing Microsoft 365.

Use Stop at the end of a specific rule to keep a general rule below it from also acting.