Automations

Your household's apps each keep track of their own things. An automation connects two of them: when something happens in one app, do something in another. For example:

• when a dose is missed in Medications, add a follow-up task in Tasks;
• when a pantry item runs low, put it on the grocery list;
• when an appointment is booked, put it on the calendar;
• when someone arrives at the home zone, mark them home on the Status Board.

Automations are managed by household admins, under Settings → Automations on the web.

Some apps depend on another app to work. Chores awards points in Rewards and pays the weekly allowance into Piggy Bank, for instance. Those connections are switched on for you when both apps are installed, and they're listed under Turned on automatically with a note saying which app needs them.

You can't edit or delete these, but you can Switch off any of them. It stays off until an admin switches it back on, even if the app is removed and installed again later.

Under Try one of these, the page suggests automations that fit the apps you have installed. Picking one fills in the form for you; check it and save. Suggestions for things you already automate are hidden. When an app update adds a new suggestion, admins get a notification pointing here.

1. Tap New automation and give it a Name.
2. Under When this happens, choose the trigger: an event from one of your installed apps.
3. Optionally, under Only if, pick a field and the value it must equal. Leave it on Always to run every time.
4. Under Do this, choose the action and the app it runs in.
5. Under Fill in the action, decide where each value comes from: copied from the event, the event's number multiplied by a factor, or a fixed value you type.
6. Leave Enabled ticked and tap Save.

Choose the action before filling it in, because changing the action clears the values you entered. Each automation has one condition, and it can only check that a field equals a value.

Each automation has a History link showing its last 20 runs. ok means it ran. skipped_filter means the "Only if" condition didn't match, and skipped_dedupe means it had already run for that event. error comes with a reason, most often that the app it acts on has been removed. Runs are kept for 30 days.

skipped_anonymous means the event came from a share link, filled in by someone outside your household. An automation ignores those unless you edit it and turn on Also run for share-link submissions. Leave that off for anything that awards points or money.

Use Pause to stop an automation for a while and Resume to restart it; Delete removes it for good.

• Both apps must be installed. Only installed apps' events and actions are offered.
• An automation runs at most once for any one event, so nothing is counted twice.
• One automation can't set off another, so there are no chain reactions.
• A household can have 25 automations of its own, and each can run up to 200 times a day.
• Forwarded email can be a trigger too: choose the Family Inbox event. See Family Inbox.