Goal
Most automations run the moment the task before them is completed. Sometimes that is too soon — you want the follow-up email to go out three days later, or the field to populate first thing tomorrow morning rather than at 11pm tonight. The Timing step lets you hold an automation for a set number of days and run it at an hour you choose.
Prerequisites
A project template with an automation attached to a task. See Creating Your First Automation.
A task that comes after another task, so there is something to wait on.
Step 1: Open the Timing step
Go to Library > Projects and open your project template.
Open the task that carries the automation and open its automation configuration.
Work through Pick Automation and Configure as you normally would.
Continue to the third step, Timing.
Tip: Timing is optional. An automation you never touch on this step keeps running immediately, exactly as before.
Step 2: Choose when it runs
The Timing step offers two choices:
Run immediately — the default. The automation runs as soon as the previous task is completed. Nothing changes.
Schedule run — the automation waits, then runs at the time you set.
If you choose Schedule run, set two values:
Days to wait — how many days after the previous task is completed. 0 is valid and means the same day, at the hour you choose.
Run time — the hour the automation should run. The time uses your team's configured timezone, not the timezone of whoever completed the task.
Tip: If you set 0 days and an hour that has already passed today, the automation is already due and runs on the next scheduler pass rather than waiting until tomorrow.
What you'll see
Once the previous task is completed, the automation does not start. Instead the task shows a badge telling you when it is scheduled to run, with the date and time.
When it actually runs
Scheduled automations are picked up on a regular sweep, so the run lands shortly after the time you set rather than exactly on the minute.
It runs once. A scheduled automation does not fire again the next day.
It only fires if the project is still sitting on that step. Move the project past it and the scheduled run is skipped.
If a scheduled automation fails
A scheduled run that fails is not retried automatically. The failure is surfaced so that someone can see it, rather than disappearing quietly, and the automation is rerun by hand once the cause is fixed.
Expected outcome
Work that should not happen the instant a task is checked off no longer does. The follow-up email goes out on the day you intended, at an hour a client will actually read it, and you can see from the task list exactly what is queued and when.
Related features
Automations Overview — what automations are and how to attach one
Creating Your First Automation — the full setup walkthrough
Common Automation Recipes — patterns worth copying
Tips
Schedule client-facing automations, run internal ones immediately. Emails and portal tasks benefit from landing at a sensible hour. Field calculations do not.
Use 0 days to move work off the night shift. A task completed at 10pm can still run its automation at 8am the next business morning.
Check the badge after your first launch. It is the fastest confirmation that timing saved the way you expected.