VSCO Workspace Automations are a great way to save yourself some time by sending clients a questionnaire, quote or contract at a specific time.
Automatically Sending Out Questionnaires
A good example of this is sending a wedding prep questionnaire one month before the wedding date.
If you haven’t already, check out how to set up a questionnaire here. You can also see the different ways of manually sending a questionnaire.
Before we get into the automation, there's a few things we need to make sure we include in the email, to be sure that the questionnaire is attached.
You can make a template here in Settings › Email Templates, that's a Questionnaire Invitation type:
The REALLY important text you need to include in all your emails to which you attach a quote or questionnaire is:
{{item.link_start}} {{item.name}} {{item.link_end}}
The language can change a bit too and you don’t always have to use the {{item.name}} token. You can use the item link start and end tokens around your own wording, like this for example:
{{item.link_start}} Click here to complete your questionnaire {{item.link_end}
Ok, now that we made sure those tokens are in the email we’re sending, let’s set up the automation.
Our ‘Send email’ action looks like this:
Those item link tokens in our email template will link to the 'reference item for tokens' selected, here that's the Pre-Wedding Questionnaire. This is the key with this kind of automation. When you want to attach a new item to a job and have a link sent by automated email, you'll select that item in the 'Reference item for tokens' dropdown. The item link tokens in the email will then become a clickable link to that item.
Remember that you will already have to have your email template and questionnaire created (in Settings › Email Templates and Settings › Questionnaires) to attach them in your automation.
This email is being sent immediately, to the 'Clients' using the email template 'Wedding Prep' and attaching the 'Wedding Prep Questionnaire'.
When this automation runs here's what it's doing:
WHEN it's 3 months before a primary session
IF that primary session is on a job with the job type Wedding AND is in the job stage Booked
THEN send this email to the clients on the job, with a link to their Wedding Prep questionnaire.
That questionnaire will be added to the job and an email sent to the client linking to their questionnaire.
Automatically Sending Out Quotes
Sending a quote by automation is almost identical to sending a questionnaire. You'll want to be sure you've created a Quote Invitation type email template here in Settings › Email Templates, which contains that 'item link' language, and a Quote Template here in Settings › Quotes to link to.
In the action of your automation you'll link to that email template and that specific quote in the Template and Reference item for tokens dropdowns:
Your automation may have a different observing and different conditions when you're sending out a quote. For example, you may want to send your wedding quote automatically when a new lead is created with your Wedding job type:
In this example above, the automation would run 1 day after a new Wedding lead is created and send out that email to the clients on the job, with a link to their wedding quote. When this automation runs the quote will be created and added to the lead, and an email with a link to that quote sent out.
Automatically Sending Out Contracts
The process for sending out contracts by automation is very much the same. You'll want to have created a Contract Invitation type template here in Settings › Email Templates, which contains that 'item link' language, and a Contract Template here in Settings › Contracts.
In this example the automation is sending out a Second Photographer contract to the Second Photographer contact on the job:
When this automation runs it will create that contract on the job, assign it to the second photographer on the job as the recipient, then send an email containing a link to the contract to the second photographer.