Routines

A routine is a repeat job that belongs to one team member. You write what it should do in plain English, choose when it runs, and Operly turns your instruction into a numbered plan of steps.

Routines live on a team member's Desk, under Routines. Good first routines are a morning brief, a reply draft for new email from a client, or a task for each new calendar event. See Routines for examples.

1. Open a team member's thread, choose Desk, then the Routines tab.
2. Choose New routine.
3. Fill in Name and Instruction. The Example actions list gives phrases you can add.
4. Under When to run, choose Add trigger and pick one.
5. Choose Create routine, read the Compiled plan, then choose Confirm and save.

A new routine starts Paused. Switch Active on when you want it to run.

When you choose Create routine, Operly reads your instruction and shows a Compiled plan: a numbered list of the exact steps the routine will run. The button then changes to Confirm and save. Nothing is saved until you press it. If you change the instruction, trigger or schedule, you review a new plan.

Steps come from a fixed set: archive, trash, star or label email, mark it read or unread, create a task or reminder, decline a calendar event, send you a notification, classify, extract fields, draft for review, write a brief, or run a connected-app action. A request outside that set is refused with a reason, so reword it.

In the builder, Add trigger lists these groups:

• Built-in: A new email arrives (Gmail or Outlook), A calendar event happens, On a schedule.
• Messaging: an inbound webhook, or a Telegram, Slack or Signal message.
• Operly app: a task or reminder is created, updated, completed, overdue or due, or a document is created or updated.
• Connected apps: events from services you have connected.

For the email trigger you can watch all connected accounts or pick one under From account.

Choose On a schedule, then set Frequency: Every 5 minutes, Hourly, Daily, Weekly or Monthly. Daily, weekly and monthly routines also take a Time; weekly adds a Day of week and monthly a Day of month (1 to 28). The default is daily at 07:00.

A new routine uses the timezone in your Settings, Profile. You can pick another under Timezone. Frequent schedules use up your plan's Usage faster, and the builder warns you about 5-minute and hourly schedules. Daily or weekly is the safer start.

Open the routine and choose Test run at the top right. It runs the routine now, and the result appears in Run history with a message such as how many items were processed and matched.

Test run is available only when the routine is saved, Active, has no unsaved edits, and uses the schedule, new email or calendar event trigger. If the button is greyed out, save your changes first. On the full Routines page, Run now in a routine's menu does the same.

Open the routine and expand Run history at the bottom. It lists the 12 most recent runs with a status: Running, Completed, Partial, Skipped or Failed. When a run did not finish cleanly, the reason is shown under it.

Runs that wrote a brief or draft show the text under Output or Draft produced, with Read full output for long ones. If a run created an email draft, Open in Email Drafts to Send takes you to it. Read the output rather than trusting Completed alone.

A routine's own steps can draft but not send: the plan offers Draft for review, and the draft waits in Email Drafts to Send. Other steps act inside Operly or on your mail, such as archiving, labelling, creating tasks or notifying you.

Review the Compiled plan before you confirm, since saved routines run on their own. For sends your team makes outside a routine: your team carries out the sends you ask for, so ask for drafts when you want to read first.

The message appears next to Save. The common ones:

• AI Features are off. Routines with drafting, briefing or classifying steps need them on. Turn them on in Settings, Data & Privacy, then press Save again. You can also leave the routine paused.
• Monthly Usage is used up. Compiling a plan stops until Usage resets or you add more in Settings, Billing.
• Timezone required on a schedule: pick a timezone.
• The request can't be compiled. The message says why; reword the instruction.

Yes. If your instruction needs hands-on work in a browser, such as signing in to a site, filling in a form or checking live prices, the plan marks that step On the computer.

The routine must belong to a team member, not the workspace, because only team members use the computer. Write steps that end in something to review, such as a saved file, because the computer pauses for you before anything that pays or uploads.

Open the routine from the Desk. The Active switch pauses or resumes it. Edit the name, instruction or trigger, then Save changes; a changed instruction or trigger shows a fresh Compiled plan to confirm, and switching trigger removes filters from the old one.

Delete asks Delete routine? and removes it permanently. On the full Routines page you can also Archive it, and archived routines are listed in Settings, Archived Routines. Archiving a team member also pauses their routines.