Automation & Manual Operations

Scheduling automation in Insycle is simple. You can schedule automation at the module-level, by selecting a set schedule for your template to run.

Additionally, you can tie multiple templates together and schedule them to run automatically using Insycle Recipes. For example, you might tie multiple templates together that deduplicate contacts, format names, format phone numbers, associate them to companies, and standardize their address. Recipes are extremely powerful.

For HubSpot users, you can also include Insycle Recipes in your HubSpot workflows.

Templates are key concept in Insycle.

In every module you can save the configuration, settings, filters & layout into a Template for reuse later and to share it with your team. Templates encompass all settings on a module.

Templates are also the building block that enables automation in Insycle.

You can schedule a template to run automatically on a set schedule on its own. For example, you might automate a template that deduplicates contacts based on their name and company name.

Or, you can tie multiple templates together and schedule them to run automatically using Insycle Recipes. For example, you might tie multiple templates together that deduplicate contacts, format names, format phone numbers, associate them to companies, and standardize their address. Recipes are extremely powerful.

For example, here is a template for extracting a company name from a website URL using the Transform Data module.

To create a Template, click the Add Template Button (+) to give your template a name, then click the Save Button to save it for future use.

When you click on the relevant action button (Bulk Merge, Transform, Update, etc.), a dialog will pop up and ask you to choose between running the update automatically using a schedule, or manually just once now.

Automation

You can schedule templates to run automatically on a set schedule. Templates can be schedule to run hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly.

Run Now

If you do not want to automate your template and only want to run it one-time, immediately, click the "Run Now" tab.

Here you can select which records you would like to be included in the run. To select records individually, select them in the Record Viewer on the module screen.

You can also automate by adding Insycle Recipes to HubSpot Workflows.

In this example, Insycle will cleanse and deduplicate contacts, after they fill out the lead capture form, and before they receive the "Welcome" email.

Recipes are a sequence of templates that have been chained together.

For example, you might tie multiple templates together that deduplicate contacts, format names, format phone numbers, associate them to companies, and standardize their address. Recipes are extremely powerful.

You can find Recipes on your left menu.

To learn more, see Integrate Insycle with HubSpot Workflows.

Scheduled automations run after the nightly sync between your CRM and Insycle is complete. Automations do not run at a specific time, for example on the hour, or at an exact time of day.

It is preferable for most companies to have automated data updates take place at night, rather than during the workday. 

Because the nightly sync can take different amounts of time each night, your automations may start at a different time each day. For example, on Monday your phone number formatting template may start at 3:01 AM and finish at 3:04 AM. But on Tuesday, the automation may start at 3:03 AM and finish at 3:05 AM. 

The same is true for automations scheduled hourly. They will run once per hour, but not necessarily at a set minute.

The start time and completion time for any automations will show up in the Activity Tracker, beginning from when the operation starts to run. 

To view existing scheduled automations, click the "Automation" page on the left-hand navigation menu.

On this page, you can see all currently scheduled automations. Additionally, you can see if the automation is active, and whether or not it was set up in Preview Mode or Update Mode. If it is in Preview Mode, your data will not be updated when the automation runs, a sample CSV will be generated showing what the changes would have been had it been in Update Mode.

On this page, you are provided with the following information about each scheduled automation:

• App - HubSpot, Salesforce, Intercom, Pipedrive, etc.
• Account - The account that the automation has been scheduled on. This is useful if you have multiple accounts on the same platform, or are using a demo/sandbox account to test changes.
• Module - The Insycle module used to schedule the automation
• Type - Record type affected by the automation—contacts, companies, deals, custom objects, etc.
• Active/Preview/Export - Is the automation actively running? Is it in Preview Mode? Is it an export? Exports simply export data from your CRM and do not update data.
• Template - The Insycle template name used to schedule the automation.
• Schedule - When the automation is scheduled to run.
• Created by - Who originally created the automation.
• Last Updated - When was the automation last updated or changed.

To deactivate a scheduled automation, navigate to the Automations page on your left-hand navigation screen.

Once there, select the automation that you would like to deactivate and turn off.

Then click the Edit button on the upper right hand corner of the screen.

Then, the template schedule for your selected template will appear. Here, you can toggle whether or not it is active, change the run order, or alter the schedule, then save.

Insycle's throughput it generally 200 records per minute for a simple update. For example, changing an owner of a record in bulk from Jane Johnson to John Smith.

However, more involved processes can take longer. For example, when merging 3 deals into one it may need 20-40 operations to update and re-parent all the related activities from the duplicates into the master.

The throughput is across all operations, when running multiple operations in parallel, they affect the throughput and may take longer to update your database. 

All data updates made through Insycle, whether automatically or manually, are available the Activity Tracker.

You can access the Activity Tracker on the left-hand navigational menu.

This provides you with detailed automation about each operation run within Insycle.

The Activity Tracker includes information and statistics about every operation:

• Timing Information: Start, finish, and duration times for each operation
• Record counts: Total, succeeded, failed, updated, created, deleted, unmodified
• Usage info: User, app, account, module, record type, template
• Type: Manual vs. automated operation
• Mode: Preview or Update
• Recipe: hover to see the corresponding Recipe Run ID, when applicable

In the Activity Tracker, click on the relevant Run ID to download a CSV report of the records affected by that operation.

The CSV report includes:

• Record ID
• Record Name
• Deeplink to the record in the native CRM
• Values "before" and "after" the operation
• Additional fields based on the specific modules and selection.

One issue that you may run into is setting too broad of a filter for automated operations (or no filter at all), causing Insycle to have to analyze your entire database to run the operation. Insycle processes about 200 record updates per hour. When you run operations on your whole database, that creates a backlog that you may not be able to ever work through if those operations run too often.

For instance, some people schedule automated data updates to run every hour. Scanning your entire database every hour is not realistic and will cause the backlog. To avoid this, limit the number of records that Insycle updates through automation. 

One simple method is to limit your automation to only records that have been modified recently. 

There are other ways to limit the records included in an operation as well. 

For example, if you were associating contacts to companies, you would want to limit your filter to only contacts that do not have an associated company ID. This way, Insycle will only run the operation for contacts that meet the criteria and do not currently have an associated company, rather than running the operation for your entire database.

There are a few benefits to this. First, your operations will run faster since Insycle does not have to examine your entire database. Additionally, avoiding these help us to keep Insycle from bogging down with large operations.

If you are looking for near real-time updates, consider integrating Insycle with your HubSpot Workflows rather than scheduling automation through the Insycle platform. This will help you to ensure that Insycle is only running for the records that meet the specification of your HubSpot Workflow, such as running Insycle Recipes after a customer fills out your contact form.