An automation is a rule you build once and leave running. Instead of relying on someone remembering to ask every collision client about concussion symptoms at six weeks, you describe the rule and Quilia does it, on every case, from then on.
Every automation answers four questions, and the screen asks them in that order.
| Question | What you set | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Who it goes to | An audience: a description of a set of clients |
| 2 | When it fires | A trigger: a date, plus how long before or after it |
| 3 | What it does | One or more actions |
| 4 | How it reaches them | The channels: push always, plus text or email |
Step 1: Build the audience
An audience is a rule, not a list of names. People join and leave it on their own as their cases move, so it never goes stale.
The four fields
| Field | What it matches |
|---|---|
| Everyone | Every client at your firm. No values to pick. |
| Case status | Pending, invited, open, closed, or archived. |
| Case phase | Your own phases, read from your case management system. |
| Case type | The case types your firm actually has cases in. |
Phases and case types come from your own data, so you only ever see values that mean something at your firm.
Operators
Each condition is either is any of or is none of, and one condition can hold several values. Those values are treated as "any of them," so case phase is any of Treating, Negotiating matches a client in either.
How conditions combine
- Inside a group: every condition must match.
- Across groups: matching any one group is enough.
So a single group holding case status is any of open and case type is any of Motor Vehicle Collision reaches clients who are both. Add a second group and you reach anyone who matches either.
Shortcuts
Describe it in plain English. Type what you want (closed motor vehicle collision cases) and Quilia drafts the conditions. Review them before saving. If part of your request could not be expressed, it tells you which part.
Picked lists still work. Hand-picked groups of specific clients are listed alongside audiences, marked as picked lists. A picked list is frozen; an audience keeps itself current. Your Active cases audience is built for you, and can be edited but not deleted.
Step 2: Choose the trigger
The trigger is one sentence made of four controls, read left to right:
Send [9] [months] [after] [the case opened]
The six triggers
| Trigger | The date it counts from |
|---|---|
| The case opened | When the case became open in Quilia, not when your firm accepted the matter. |
| The case closed | When the case closed. Says nothing about outcome: a rejection and a settlement both close. |
| The client was invited | When the client was invited to Quilia. Absent on cases never invited. |
| The case last changed phase | When this person's phase last changed. Phase is per person, so co-clients can differ. |
| The client's birthday | The client's date of birth. |
| The incident date | The date of injury on the case. The date a personal-injury firm actually reasons in, and it can differ from the case-opened date by however long intake took. |
Setting the offset
- Number and unit: days, weeks, months, or years.
- Direction: before, on, or after. Choosing on removes the number, since there is no distance to specify.
- Send at: an hour, applied in each recipient's own timezone. Nine in the morning means nine in the morning wherever your client is.
Repeating
| Option | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Once per recipient | The default. Each client gets it a single time. |
| Every [offset] | Reuses the offset you already set: 60 days after the case opened, then every 60 days. Only offered when the offset counts forward. |
| Every year | Automatic for birthdays, which recur by nature. |
Step 3: Add actions
Add as many as you need from the plus box under What it does. An automation has to do at least one thing before it can be saved.
Send a message
A text or email, with a tab per language your audience reads.
- Each language tab shows how many of your recipients read it.
- Generate a translation and edit it directly, or write one from scratch.
- Regenerating only replaces the language you are looking at, so copy you wrote yourself elsewhere is safe.
- Clients reading a language you have no tab for get the English. Nobody is skipped for want of a translation.
- Change the English later and the affected tabs are marked out of date.
Ask for a score
An NPS request that stands on its own. You do not have to invent a message to attach it to.
Inside it is a checkbox: And a Google review, if they are a promoter. Only clients scoring 9 or 10 are asked, and the ask happens in the app the moment the score arrives, so nothing waits on a result.
The review link resolves per client: their own office's link first, your firm-wide link behind it. With no review link configured anywhere, the form says so and points you at Settings, then Organization / locations. Clients still get the score request either way.
Send a form
Sends one of your saved forms as a request on the client's case. Build forms first under Requests, then Forms.
The audience and trigger are already set on the automation, so this action only asks which form. Anyone already holding that form unanswered is skipped rather than asked twice.
Step 4: Choose how it reaches them
These are layers, not alternatives. Push always happens; text and email are what you add on top.
| Channel | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Push notification | Always on, and not a choice. The app is where the message lives. |
| ↳ Send via text if push is disabled | Sits under push, because it only does anything for clients push cannot reach. |
| Text message | Everyone with a phone number gets one, including clients who already have the app. |
| Sent alongside the rest. |
A holiday note and a signature request do not deserve the same interruption, which is what this section is for: adding reach where it is warranted rather than texting everyone by default.
Pausing and stopping
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Pause | Holds the queue in place. Tells you how many sends are queued and when the first is due, because resuming skips any whose dates passed while paused. |
| Stop | Cancels every scheduled send. Anything already sent is left alone. |
Resuming skips missed sends on purpose. A birthday message a year stale is not late, it is wrong. And stopping never deletes history, because rewriting it would change what a client was told.
A worked example
Forty-two days after the incident, send collision clients the TBI symptom questionnaire.
Mild traumatic brain injury is routinely missed in the emergency room. The headaches, the memory trouble, the light sensitivity surface weeks later, long after intake, and if nobody asks at that point it never makes the file. Six weeks is when it is worth asking.
- Audience. One group, two conditions: case status is any of open and case type is any of Motor Vehicle Collision.
- Trigger.
Send 42 days after the incident date, at 09:00. Leave Repeats on Once per recipient. - Actions. Add Send a form and choose your TBI questionnaire. Build it first under Requests, then Forms, if you do not have one.
- How it reaches them. Push covers it. Add a text if you want it seen the same day.
- Check before saving. Read the matching count on the audience, then the coverage line on the trigger: about 85% of open cases carry an incident date, and the rest are skipped rather than sent late.
Anyone already past day 42 is skipped, so this starts with your next collision case rather than reaching backwards.
A second one, for the other end of the case
The day after a case closes, thank the client and ask how we did.
- Audience. Case status is any of closed and case status is none of open, so clients with another live matter are left out.
- Trigger.
Send 1 day after the case closed, at 09:00. - Actions. Send a message with the thank-you, then Ask for a score, ticking the Google review box if you have a review link configured.
- How it reaches them. Push alone. It is a thank-you, not an emergency.