Book Initial Coaching Session Template—Creating an Automation

This article is about setting up the “Book Initial Coaching Session” template in an automation. If you haven’t yet customized the flow template for your portal, please see this article before continuing here.

First, you need to go to the automations tool in the admin website. If you need help getting there, see this article. 

On the main automations page, you can see a table listing automations that currently exist for this portal. We are going to make a new one for the Book Initial Coaching Session template—select CREATE above the right corner of the table.

You are now in the Automations Builder.

Select the Settings option in the builder's "Start of Automation" tile. This opens the title and Start-Trigger fields on the left. Create a title for the automation (you can title it Book Initial Coaching Session to match the template if you choose).

Select the “Start Trigger” drop down and select trigger “Manual.” A manual trigger means you will initiate the automation within the member’s profile.

Now, select the plus sign in the upper left to reveal the component boxes.

Add an email component to the automation by dragging the “Send Email” box to the drag-and-drop automation building box. This is now set as the first (and only) component in the automation. Click into the “Send Email” component box, then select the “Edit” button that appears on the left to open the message-editor window.

Now, you can create the email message that will be sent to the member when the automation is sent.

Add your message in the Edit Draft section of the page (this is the section on the right). The “Message Subject” will appear to the member as the subject line of the email, and the content box beneath it is where you will add the main email message.

We have provided you with a Book Initial Coaching Session message example below. You can copy and paste this or create your own message.

Book Initial Coaching Session Message Example:

Message Subject: Let's get to know each other!

It's time to book your first coaching session! Please select a date and time in this calendar that would best suit you.

**Leave a space here to enter the flow link, which we'll do in a moment.**

We look forward to working with you!

In Health,
Your Coaching Team

You've set the subject line and the main body content for the email. All we need to do now is replace the bold-red placeholder text with the link to the flow we made earlier...

In the top-left corner of this email creation box, you will see a “Resources” button beneath a "Templates" button. Click on “Resources” and you'll get a listing of all the resources that are enabled for the portal, including the Book Initial Coaching Session flow we made earlier. You can find it by scrolling through the list or by typing the title into the search field.

Don't click it quite yet!

Before you click on the flow in the resource listing, go back over to the email content we were just working on and highlight the placeholder text, then un-bold it by clicking the "B" in the editor above. Now you can go and click on the flow's listing and it will automatically replace the placeholder text with the title of the flow:

1. Highlight the bold-red placeholder text.
2. Un-bold it by clicking on the B button in the editor.
3. Select the flow from the resources listing.

Note: If you want the link text in the email to be something other than the title of your flow, you can change it with the “Edit/Insert Link” box. Simply highlight the link text, click on the link button, and enter the text you want to be seen in the "Text to display" field. For instance, you might say something like, "Book our next meeting here..."

Once you are happy with the email, select “SAVE EMAIL.”

Now you have saved the email with the flow included in it. To enable the template and automation, select “Save” (1) and then “Publish” (2) in the upper right corner.

Now the automation can be manually sent to a member.