Using Space Automate
Schedules and triggers
Make work happen by itself, on a timetable or when something occurs.
An automation runs without you pressing a button. There are two families:
- A schedule starts it at a time: “every weekday at 8 am”.
- A trigger starts it when something happens: “when a customer email arrives”.
Schedules are on Scheduled in the sidebar, and triggers on Triggers. Both are the same kind of thing underneath, and once created, an automation's kind can't be changed.
Create one by asking
The easiest way is to tell the copilot:
Try asking
Give me a status update of Jira tasks assigned to me every weekday at 8 am.
When an email asking about an order arrives in support@abc.io, run the order-status-update playbook.
Every Friday at 3 pm, have @ada and @bo prepare and review the weekly plan.
The copilot shows a confirmation card in plain words: the schedule, the next three run times, what it will do, and which actions to pre-approve. Confirm and it's created.
Small tasks (one to three steps) become a saved instruction. Larger ones (four or more steps) become a playbook you can edit, or you can point the automation at a playbook you already have.
What can start one
| Starts when… | Details |
|---|---|
| A schedule | Daily, weekly, whenever you like, in your time zone. No more often than every 15 minutes. |
| A one-time date | Run once at a set moment. |
| An app event | A new email arrives, a Slack message or mention, a new file in Drive, a payment succeeded, and more, depending on the connected app. |
| A Space event | A file is added to a knowledge base, a playbook run finishes, or a table row is added, changed or deleted. |
| A webhook | An outside system calls a private web address that Space gives you. |
For app events you can add a plain-language condition that the AI checks before each run, such as “only if the email is about an order”. You can also choose Reply to the sender: when a run succeeds, the result is sent back as an email reply or in the Slack thread.
What it runs
- An instruction: “Check these folders and tell me what's new.”
- A playbook, with its starting values.
- An agent, who gets a task each time.
Giving a playbook its inputs
Automations run unattended, so a playbook can't ask questions. You provide values for each question up front:
- A fixed value:
customer_id = cus_1333. - A value from the event, picked from a list: the email's sender, subject and text; a Slack channel and message; a table row's columns; a webhook's fields.
If a value is missing or the wrong type, Space tells you before saving. Steps that always ask, secret answers and document uploads can't be pre-filled, and a run that reaches one fails and says which.
Pre-approving actions
Nobody is there to click Approve at 3 am. So when you set up an automation you choose which actions are pre-approved: sending an email, changing a table, using web search. Anything not pre-approved pauses the run and waits for you in the automation's own chat. After you approve, the run finishes.
Following results
- Each run posts its result to the automation's own conversation, and you get a notification.
- Open the automation for its run history: status, what triggered it, the output or error.
- Temporary failures are retried twice automatically.
- If the system was down at the scheduled time, the missed run happens once when it is back, then the schedule carries on.
Managing them
- Edit the time, time zone, event, what it runs, its inputs and pre-approved actions in the web app.
- Pause and resume without deleting.
- Run now to test. A trigger tested this way has no event, so values taken from the event are empty.
Limits and good habits
- Each person can have up to 20 active automations.
- Automations run as you, with your access, every time. If you lose access to something, the automation stops being able to use it. If your account is deactivated, your automations pause.
- Text from emails, files and table rows is passed in as information, never as instructions. Still, don't let an unattended automation take irreversible actions on outside input without a Review step.
Webhooks in short
A webhook automation has a private address. Whoever calls it, such as another system or form, must sign the request with a shared secret, which Space checks. The fields they send become ${trigger.<field>} values for your playbook. Ask your administrator or a technical colleague to set up the calling side.