On the Automation Center page, you can view a list of existing programs, along with their Status, the Admin (user) who created them and their Created date.

There are two ways to create a program:

1. Create Blank Program
   This opens the workspace for you to create your own program from scratch.
2. Create Program From Blueprint / Tactic

This displays the Blueprints dialog box, where you can:

• Use the Blueprint category menu to filter all the available preconfigured blueprints, e.g. based on Customer Lifecycle segment.
• Choose from a selection of blueprints; selecting one displays it in the Preview pane below.

Select the option you want and click Create to open the workspace. Here you have a menu on the left which contains all available workspace nodes, plus a title and action bar at the top. Hover the mouse over the icons to get more information on what they do.

To name a brand new program, simply click the edit icon next to the title (default name is New Program #) and include a description.

The participation settings determine how frequently, and how often, a contact can enter a program.

To open the dialog, click Participation on the program title bar.

• Standard entry criteria are based on whether or not a contact has already entered the program, and if so, how recently.
• Advanced entry criteria assume that the contact has been through the program once already, and are based on when they last exited it.

The settings you define here will be applied to the program at the node which displays the cog wheel icon. This will be the entry node of a transactional program, or the first segment node in a recurring program.

The participation settings you define will also apply to the program when it is in testing.

Exit criteria are an easy way to remove contacts from a program as soon as your objective has been reached.

For example, if you have a trial period for your product during which a contact does not have to pay, you may want to set up a conversion program. Your objective is to convert each contact to a payment plan by sending a series of daily emails with useful information, and maybe even incentives as the end of the trial period approaches. As soon as the contact has signed up to the payment plan, you don’t want to send them any more of these conversion messages.

Instead of adding a filter after every Wait node, you can simply specify exit criteria. This automatically applies a filter with these criteria after every Wait node and before the entry point. Once a contact fulfills the criteria (i.e. has signed up) they are removed from the program and cannot re-enter it.

To define such criteria, first create a segment that will identify the contacts you want to exclude. Then open the program and click Exit Criteria on the program title bar. Here you define a program-level setting for what criteria are used to remove a contact from a program. There are two options:

• No exit criteria – No program-level settings are used.
• Segment Based criteria – Select from your available segments to remove a contact from the program when they meet the criteria (e.g. made a purchase).

If there are exit criteria defined:

• The number of contacts who left the node due to these criteria will show up under Finished in the History widget.

You can link programs together so that a contact reaching a Finish node in one program automatically enters a second one.  To do so, proceed as follows:

1. First, make sure that the second (target) program starts with the node Entry from another program.

2. In the first (source) program, open the Finish node and activate the Transfer participants to another program toggle. All programs that start with the node Entry from another program are listed. Select the target program from the list.  

The Finish node is now shown as Finish and transfer, and the target program is visible in the tooltip.

The target program now has the first program displayed as the source program in its entry point.

There is no combined reporting for linked programs; each one has the standard reporting features for all programs.

For more information, see Connecting programs.

Click the Save icon on the workspace Actions bar. The Automation Center validates the program before saving (see below), but it does not have to pass the validation check in order to be saved. It is a mere indication of the state of the program.

For a program to be activated, it must fulfil a number of conditions. For example, all nodes must contain content, and must have the mandatory settings defined (e.g. subject line for emails).

Every time you save a program, the validation errors are displayed in the bottom right of the workspace for a few seconds (you can pin them to the user interface by clicking the pin icon) and above the affected nodes. Hover your mouse over the icon for details of the error.

Errors in program settings are checked and displayed on Activation.

1. Click the Schedule icon on the program Title bar and make your selection from the drop-down menu; you must specify a start date in the future.
2. Click Set Schedule.

Scheduled programs can be paused, in which case they will not become active when their start date is reached. If the start date has already passed when you re-activate the program, you receive a warning message that the program will start immediately, and you have the option to change the start date to a date in the future.

Clicking Activate in the Program Status drop-down starts the program, unless a start date in the future has been entered. Provided all validation checks have been passed, the program is now live and contacts can enter and progress along it as expected.