User stories: How can automations make your team more efficient and effective?

To get some possible conversation started, I will share a few categories and ideas that we’ve discussed with some partners thus far. Do any of these use cases ring a bell for you? What would help streamline your processes and save time in your organization?

NOTE: Automation Hub is currently available as a beta test for existing customers. Click on my profile and use the “send message” button to get started!

🗣 Communication

Sending a message to a group of people to inform them that an event has occurred.

Examples:

• When content is updated, send a notice to a specific Slack channel.
• When new content is posted in a specific category, send an email to a group of people.
• When content reaches a specific workflow, send a text message to alert editors that it is ready for review.
• When new content reaches a published stage, send a push notification to app subscribers.

🔗 Streamline Workflow

Perform a workflow action whenever an event has occurred. 

• If a content entry hits the publish stage but it does not have an image, include our site logo as a default image.

👮 Police Consistency

Add specific metadata whenever content hits a specific stage.

• When content completes the “legal review” workflow stage, add a keyword tag of “legal_approved” to the content.
• Each product entry, when published, will have a keyword tag of its category (i.e. shoes, clothes, etc.) for SEO purposes.

✅ Vendor Integration

Triggering a process in another platform whenever a specific event happens.

Examples:

• When new content is created, sent it to Smarling for translation.
• When a product description is updated in Contentstack, sync to BigCommerce.
• When a web hook is triggered in another platform, create a new article in Contentstack and put it in the “Ideas” workflow stage, then notify a Slack channel that a new idea has been submitted.
• When content is updated in Contentsack, sync to Algolia to update the search index.

💻 Development

Triggering a development platform process whenever a specific event happens.

• When content updates are made in Contentstack, deploy the changes to Netlify.
• When content is published in Contentstack, trigger a new repo build in TravisCI.
• When entries are updated in Contentstack, back them up to AWS S3.

🗂 Project Management

Triggering a new ticket update in Jira when an action happens in Contentstack.

• When new content is created in Contentstack, create a new task in Jira asking the legal team to review the changes.

I will add more ideas as I think of them; I’m sure there are thousands of combinations of triggers and actions! What am I missing? 😀

More information

Here is a list of currently supported triggers and actions: https://www.contentstack.com/docs/developers/automation-hub-connectors/

Step-by-step how-tos for some common use cases: https://www.contentstack.com/docs/developers/automation-hub-guides/automation-hub-real-world-scenarios/