Fix an automation that will not activate

Read the state, then read the dialog

Open the automation and look at the control in the header. It reads one of four states, and each one means something specific.

• Draft, Not live yet. It has never been activated. Flipping it on takes it live.
• Active, Running. It is live and watching for its trigger.
• Paused, Can be resumed. It was live and someone turned it off. Flipping it on resumes it.
• Completed, This automation is complete. This is a one-time automation that has already fired. It has no switch, and it will never run again unless you give it a new date.

Now flip the switch on and read what comes back. If the automation is fine, you get a summary of what it will do and an Activate button. If something is wrong, the switch snaps back and a dialog names the problem. Nothing has changed on the server.

There are four possible refusals, and the dialog tells you which one you have hit: Cannot activate yet with a step count, Cannot activate yet pointing at the trigger, Incompatible steps must be removed, or a message about verifying your account. Steps 2, 3 and 4 handle them in that order.

Open your automations in Mailsoftly

Clear every step wearing a badge

The most common refusal is Cannot activate yet, followed by a count of steps with missing required fields. The dialog scrolls straight to the first one and flashes it, so you do not have to hunt.

Look for the amber badge on the step card. It reads one of two things.

• Missing fields. The step needs something it does not have.
• Incompatible action. The step cannot work with this automation’s trigger at all.

Only hard requirements are checked, which is why a step you thought was half finished may activate cleanly. This is the full list of what each step type insists on.

• Send Email and Create Email Draft need both a template and a subject line.
• Send Webhook needs a Webhook URL.
• Add Tag and Remove Tag need at least one tag chosen. Add to Selected Lists and Remove from Selected Lists need at least one list.
• Wait needs a duration greater than zero. Wait Until needs a duration and at least one condition row.
• Condition needs at least one configured condition row.
• Value split needs a field and its lanes, and the lanes must be different from each other. Two lanes that differ only in capitalisation count as the same lane, and no lane can be called Otherwise, since that name is reserved for the fallback.
• Stop and Remove from All Lists need nothing.

If a step activates cleanly but then does not do what you expected, the problem is the choice of step rather than a missing field. Choose the right automation action walks all thirteen and says what each one is for.

The Incompatible action badge is a narrower case. Find or Create Contact and Update Contact both read the payload of an incoming webhook, so they only make sense on a webhook-triggered automation. Change the trigger to something else and those steps lose their data source. Mailsoftly will not activate around them: the dialog reads Incompatible steps must be removed, and on the builder page it offers a red Remove incompatible steps button that strips them from the canvas for you. You still have to save afterwards.

Finish the trigger’s own settings

If the dialog says the trigger is not fully set up, it opens Trigger Settings for you. Most triggers need one thing chosen before they can watch for anything.

• Trigger when a contact is added to a contact list needs the list.
• Trigger when a campaign is sent needs the campaign.
• Trigger when a tag is added to contact needs the tag.
• Trigger when a form response is received needs the form.
• Trigger when data is received from a Webhook Endpoint needs the endpoint. See Receive data with a webhook endpoint if you have not created one yet.
• Start on a date from each contact needs the date field.
• Trigger when it’s a contact’s birthday needs a number of days of notice greater than zero.
• Start at a specific date and time needs three things: a date, an audience list, and a date that is still in the future. The list is required on purpose, so a one-time send can never quietly go to everyone in your account.

Four triggers need nothing at all: contact created, contact updated, contact unsubscribed, and contact becomes Active again.

Two more rules live here. If your trigger is a webhook, the very first step must be Find or Create Contact, because every step after it needs a contact to act on; the dialog says so in as many words, though it writes the name the other way round, as Create or Find Contact. And if you added any parallel start events under Also start when, each of them needs its own target chosen, or you have to remove it.

When the block is your account, not your flow

There is one refusal that has nothing to do with how you built the automation. If your account is not verified yet, you get an alert titled Verify to activate, reading "Verify your account to activate automations. You can still draft and preview them." You land back on the automations list.

This is the same gate that governs public forms and landing pages, and it covers more than the switch. While it is on, you also cannot run an automation by hand for selected contacts and you cannot run the own-email test. Building, editing, picking triggers and simulating all stay open.

The dependable way to clear it is to connect a business mailbox. Connecting Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 proves you control a real company domain, and the account is promoted automatically a couple of minutes later. A personal Gmail or Outlook.com address does not qualify: the check is specifically for a workspace domain. Send with Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 walks the connection.

The banner on the automation page also offers Verify domain, which takes you to your DNS records. That is worth doing on its own merits, and Authenticate your sending domain covers it. If you finish it and the switch is still blocked, contact support rather than repeating the DNS steps.

It is live, so ask whether the trigger could have fired

Now the second problem. The automation says Active and nothing has happened. Before you look at anything else, check whether the trigger was ever in a position to fire for the people you had in mind, because in almost every case it was not.

Open Trigger Settings and read the amber Heads up line under your trigger. That line exists precisely because these rules surprise people.

The four that account for most of the silence:

• Activating does not reach back. Every trigger except one watches for the next occurrence. Turning an automation on today does nothing to the contacts already in your account. The single exception is Start at a specific date and time, which enrolls its whole audience list when the moment arrives and then marks itself Completed.
• Trigger when a contact is created does not fire for imports or form responses. If you added your people with a CSV, no contact-created automation ran for any of them. The same is true of a signup form response. If you need a welcome flow for form signups, trigger it on the form instead. See Import contacts and manage lists for what an import does and does not set off.
• Trigger when a contact is added to a contact list, during an import, fires only for people who already existed and were added to that list. Brand new contacts the import created do not count.
• Trigger when a contact is updated ignores a lot on purpose. Changes made by a CSV import do not count. Neither do changes in the first five minutes after a contact was created, since those are usually part of being created. Neither do internal bookkeeping fields. And unless Run only once per contact is on, the same person can re-enter at most once every ten minutes, which stops an update storm from looping.

If your automation was meant to catch people who are already in your account, no trigger will do that on its own. Enroll them by hand from the Contacts tab instead, which step 7 covers, and read the warning there before you do.

Check the entry filter, which excludes rather than includes

On the builder page, under the trigger, sits a card reading Filter contacts entering automation with a switch on the right. If that switch is on, a filter is deciding who gets in, and it works the opposite way round from most filters you have used.

The blue note in the panel spells it out: if the contact matches the selected filter, do not trigger the automation. Matching contacts will not enter. So a filter that reads Country is Germany keeps every German contact out, not in. If you built it expecting the reverse, everyone you wanted has been excluded since the day you switched it on, and none of them appear anywhere in the automation.

There are two run modes.

• Run filter once at the start. Checked once as the contact enters. A contact who fails it is never enrolled at all.
• Run filter before each step. Re-checked before every step. A contact can enter, receive the first email, then be stopped mid-flow when they start matching.

If the filter is not the problem, the other quiet exclusion is eligibility. Automation emails obey exactly the same rules as campaigns: anyone on your suppression list, anyone who unsubscribed, and anyone who opted out of that kind of email is skipped. The step is marked stopped with a plain reason and the rest of the flow carries on. Read your suppression list explains how addresses get there.

Open the Contacts tab and read one person’s run

Everything above is theory until you look at an actual run. The Contacts tab, next to Performance in the automation’s tab bar, lists every contact who entered, with a count in the tab itself.

Read it in this order.

1. Is the tab empty? Then nobody was ever enrolled, and your answer is in step 5 or 6. The trigger did not fire, or the entry filter kept them out. 2. Is your person in the list? Search by name or email. Their row shows a progress bar and a state: a live switch while the run is going, or Done, To Do, or Deactive. 3. Expand the row. You get that contact’s own step list, starting with the trigger as it was when they entered and the exact moment they entered, then every step with its status, how long after entry it ran, and, where a step was skipped, why. A step that reads "Email not sent: the recipient has unsubscribed or is on the suppression list" has just answered your question.

Two holds are worth knowing before you conclude that nothing sent. If a banner at the top of the automation says a number of automation emails are waiting on your sending limit, those emails exist and go out on their own as your limit frees up. If it says they are waiting for review, they are held for a quick check by our team and are sent once approved. In both cases nothing is lost and there is nothing to fix.

Confirm the fix before you trust it

Once you have changed something, prove it rather than waiting to find out.

Run the flow simulator first. It walks a contact through every branch, sends nothing, and reports how many people an entry filter would exclude, which is the fastest way to confirm step 6. Test automations with the simulator covers it properly.

Then watch the numbers on the Performance tab, where two readings tell you which half of this guide you are still in. Contacts enrolled sitting at zero means the trigger is still not firing, so go back to step 5. Contacts enrolled above zero with Emails sent at zero means people are getting in and the send step is not completing, so go back to step 6 or 7. Measure automation performance reads the whole tab.