The automation engine is the clinic's reflex layer. It listens to events (a session is Done, a lead is created, a payment fails) and reacts (send a confirmation, create a follow-up task, alert a manager). Most clinics underuse it. The first dozen rules you enable will pay for the year. This article walks the model, gives a working example library you can copy, and shows how to test before you ship.

Where it lives#

Settings → Automations is the locked catalog. Enable, disable, configure per-tenant knobs on platform-shipped rules.
Settings → Custom automations is where you build your own rules. List, create, edit, enable, disable, delete, Test-fire.
Reports → Automations → Run history is not yet shipped in the UI.

The model, three parts#

1. Trigger#

An event the system emits. The trigger picker is a typeahead over the registered event names (for example booking.session.created.v2, sales.invoice.created.v2) plus the special scheduler.cron for time-based rules. Common ones:

booking.session.created.v2, arrived.v2, cancelled.v2, no_show.v2, rescheduled.v2, completed.v2
sales.invoice.created.v2, sales.payment.paid.v2, sales.cashback.awarded.v2
marketing.lead.created.v2, assigned.v2, stage_changed.v2
customers.patient.created.v2
scheduler.cron, paired with a schedule expression in the Schedule section

Friendly names like "Invoice overdue T+14", "Birthday T-0", "No-show streak", and "Package about to expire" are not registered events today. They need scheduled-tick handlers to be added by engineering before they appear in the picker. If you pick a synonym that was never registered, the rule saves but never fires. Test-fire it first.

All production events are v2. The engine matches on the underlying event id.

2. Condition#

Optional filters narrow the trigger. Examples:

Patient is VIP-tagged.
Session is at branch X.
Invoice amount > AED 500.
Lead source = Meta.
Patient marketing-consent = yes.
Time-of-day inside / outside quiet hours.
Patient is > 18 years old.
Provider is Dr. X.

In the designer you get a flat list of rule rows (field, operator, value) combined with a single ALL (and) or ANY (or) switch. Operators: eq, ne, gt, gte, lt, lte, in, contains, starts_with, ends_with, matches, is_null, is_not_null, is_empty, is_not_empty, is_true, is_false.

For nested groups ((A and B) or (C and D)) or NOT, the engine accepts the full JSON-Logic tree but the FE designer does not render it. Power users hand-edit the rule's JSON via the API. Read your condition out loud before saving. A wrong condition is the most common rule-bug.

3. Action