Automations

Lextree does a few things on its own after you save a record — filling in fields, recording timeline entries, and offering to create events or workflows. None of it happens instead of your save, and none of it creates anything visible without following rules your admin set up — either asking you first or, where your admin chose it, acting on its own.

The Rule Behind Every Automation

Everything on this page happens after a save completes, never in place of it. An automation can add to what you did — it can’t hold up the save, redirect it, or fail it. If an automation ever breaks, your record is already saved; the automation is the layer that bends.

Fields and Timeline Entries

Some fields compute their own values from elsewhere on the record — a date offset from another date, a total across related records, a value carried over from a parent. These are custom fields configured to derive rather than accept typed input. On the record page, a calculated field shows a View [source] › link so you can jump straight to the record or list it’s derived from. On Add/Edit forms, a calculated field shows up as a read-only note rather than a fillable box — you’ll see its value, but you can’t type into it, since there’s nothing left for you to enter. When one looks wrong, fix the field it derives from; the calculated field follows.

Some timeline entries record themselves the same way — an expiration date passes and Expired appears with no one watching. An automatic entry is an ordinary timeline entry once it exists: correct it the same way you’d correct anything else on the timeline.

Suggestions Wait for Your Yes

Admins can attach conditions to event and workflow templates — “when a record like this gets a renewal date, offer the renewal-reminder event.” When a record you’re working with matches one of those conditions, Lextree suggests the event or workflow rather than creating it outright. Setting a suggestion up and saving it creates the item, exactly as if you’d built it yourself; rejecting it dismisses it. Nothing is ever created from a suggestion without your yes. That’s what separates a suggestion from the fields and timeline entries above, which happen on their own — and from the automatic actions described below, which your admin turns on per trigger.

The Post-Save Suggestion Panel

The most common place you’ll meet a suggestion is right after you save a record. If the record matches a condition your admin configured, a panel opens over the record offering the event or workflow.

Each suggestion is a head start, not a finished item. Set up and create (for an event) or Set up and launch (for a workflow) opens the create form right there, pre-filled from the template. You adjust whatever differs for this record, and nothing exists until you save. An event’s date is pre-filled when the template knows how to work it out and left for you to enter when it doesn’t. Reject declines the suggestion. If a colleague set up the same suggestion first, Lextree tells you who when you save, and nothing is duplicated.

You don’t have to decide immediately. Closing the panel without choosing doesn’t lose the suggestion; it moves to the notifications bell, where opening it reopens the panel for that one suggestion.

Something you set up from a suggestion behaves exactly like something you created by hand: an event produces a normal event on the record’s calendar, and a workflow produces a normal workflow you can open and work.

Automatic Actions

For each trigger on a template, an admin can choose to act automatically instead of suggesting: Create this event automatically or Launch this workflow automatically. A matching record then gets the event or workflow with no one in the loop, built entirely from the template’s defaults. That is why an automatic trigger needs more on the template than a suggestion does: an event date for an event, and at least one participant for a workflow.

What to expect from one:

• It is attributed to System. The event form reads Created automatically from the template, and the workflow’s activity names System as the launcher.
• It is an ordinary item from then on. The template never updates, moves, or removes it. If a date on the record changes later, you edit or trash the item as you would any other.
• No bell for the creation. An automatic event speaks through its reminders, and an automatic workflow notifies its participants the way any launch does.
• A blank required date means no match. If the date the template needs is empty on the record, the record doesn’t match the template at all, for an automatic action or a suggestion.
• Nothing is created if the record changes first. If the conditions stop holding, or the record is trashed, between your save and the moment the action runs, nothing happens.
• A template that can’t act is retried. If, for example, every default participant is deactivated, Lextree keeps retrying, and the action goes through once the problem is fixed. Nothing in the app lists these failures, so if an automatic event or workflow you expected didn’t appear, check the template’s participants and recipients. Your save is never affected.

Imports and Bulk Edits

Imports and bulk edits never produce suggestions or automatic actions. A suggestion is set up one record at a time, so there is no summary of suggestions after an import or a bulk update.

Records you import still qualify for the date-based rules your admin’s templates describe. As each date approaches, a suggestion arrives in the bell, where you set it up and create it. Where your admin chose automatic action for the trigger, Lextree creates the event itself.

Who Gets Workflow Suggestions

Event suggestions are available on every plan, since events are too. Workflow suggestions require Business or Enterprise , because workflows are gated at those tiers. On a plan without workflows, only event suggestions appear in the panel and the bell.

For how these conditions get set up in the first place, see Automation setup.