How to create your first automation rule?
Hello again!
Do you want to know how Planet automations work?
With them you can simplify your daily tasks by automating your price changes, making discounts on specific dates or adding tags to your products in a few seconds.
This is how to do it, if you prefer to see it in video, here it is:
Create your first rule
The first step to create a rule is to access the 'Automations' section that you will find in the left sidebar. Once here, you can create your first rule by clicking on the green button above the rules table.
Select the products
The first step to create a rule is to choose the products to which we want to apply the actions of price change, discount, tag change, etc. There are three ways to select the products:
Manually
Choose the products manually by clicking on the checkbox located to the left of each row of the table. You can filter the products to find them more easily, but remember, in manual mode you have to select those you want to include, the filtering of products does not select them automatically, for this it is recommended to use the second option: selection by filter.
Advanced filter
The second product selection option is done through a filter. For example, if you want to select products that have a tag or are in a specific collection, you only have to add this condition and all the resulting products will automatically be affected. If you modify the tags or products in a collection, the rule will be updated to apply the appropriate changes.
Whole store
As a last option you can choose the complete store, which will allow you to apply the actions to all the current and new products that you create, since it will automatically detect them.
Actions
In this section you must select those actions that you want to apply to the previously selected products. You can select as many as you want, and all of them will be changed at the same time, so you must take into account which of them may be affected each other. These are the actions that are currently supported:
- Price change: modify prices by applying a percentage or value increase or decrease on the current price or on the compared price, you can also apply a new price. In addition, this action allows you to configure the price ending and its rounding.
- Add/remove tags: change the product tags automatically during the set period.
- Change status: changes the product status between 'Draft', 'Archived' and 'Active'.
- Volume discounts (coming soon)
- Product Bundles & Packs (coming soon)
- Order total discount (coming soon)
- Much more
Schedule
The last step to configure a rule is to define the period in which it will take effect. In order for the rule to be activated it is necessary to define a start date and time. It is important to bear in mind that the rule will start changing prices at that precise moment and that it may take a few minutes depending on the number of products, so if you want them to be changed by that time, set it for a few minutes earlier.
The end date is optional, in the case of not defining it, the rule will remain active until it is manually deactivated or an end date is added. In addition, it is allowed to include more than one period as shown in the following image:
FAQs
Which states can a rule have?
Rules change status based on their schedule, and you can have the following:
- Pending: the rule is waiting until the day and time set in the schedule.
- Applying: the actions are being applied, it may take a few minutes to complete.
- Applied: the rule is active with the actions.
- Finishing: the actions are being deactivated, it may take a few minutes to complete.
- Finished: the rule is finished and has no more pending schedules.
What happens when a rule is deactivated?
When a rule is active, the established changes will be made when the time comes. On the contrary, when it is deactivated, it is disabled and no changes will be made if they are pending. If a rule that has already been applied is deactivated, the actions will revert to their original value. In this way a rule can be quickly stopped without having to reach its end date.
When can a rule be edited?
Rules can only be edited in certain cases:
- Editable: when a rule is pending or finished.
- Partial editing: when it is applied, only the schedule can be edited.
- Not editable: it cannot be edited or deactivated when it is applied or ending.
What happens if two rules affect the same product?
When two business rules are scheduled that have products in common, the rule that starts first always prevails. Therefore, even if the second rule also starts, it will not carry out the matching actions between the two rules for the products affected by the first rule until the first rule has finished. Once the first rule is finished, after a few minutes the actions will be applied to those products based on the second rule. Similarly, when there are more than two rules that have products in common.
What happens if a product is added to a collection or tag when they are already being used for a rule?
If a rule is created in which the selection by collection or tag has been used and then the tag is added to another product or added to the collection, the rule will be updated automatically taking into account the added or deleted product.
What happens if a value of a product that has already been changed by a rule is modified manually?
In case any value of a product covered by a rule action is modified manually in Shopify, the modified value will remain valid until the rule ends. If the rule had not started and the manual change is made, once it starts, it will be changed as set in the rule and when it ends it will revert to the initial value, which in this case is the one set manually. If the rule is already applied when the change is made, it will revert to the original value detected when the rule was created.
Still have questions?
In the help section you can find several articles about specific functionalities of the platform.
If you still can't find what you are looking for, don't hesitate to contact us by email or through the chat at the bottom right.
See you soon!