Once you've read how our introduction to Automations, you're ready to start creating your own. Below is an example of a custom action in Automations. A custom action is a great place to run a GraphQL mutation if you want to modify something in the site's database.
This example will log data if the WebApp item's name contains 'Hello'.
Learn more about the Log liquid tag here: https://documentation.platformos.com/api-reference/liquid/platformos-tags#log - one caveat, to read logs you won't usually be able to use pos-cli with a Siteglide site, use siteglide-cli instead:
We strongly recommend that you authorize Sendgrid to send emails from your domain to avoid them going to spam filters, or being rejected from sending by your DMARC policy.
Once you've read how our introduction to Automations, you're ready to start creating your own. Siteglide Automations can send transactional Emails powered by Sendgrid. By transactional emails, we mean an email sent to, or c.c.ed to one or a few relevant people when a trigger occurs. Below is an example of an email in Automations.
This example will send an email to 'richard.hendricks@siteglide.com' with a link to the newly created item.
Note, for forms, use the form variable for submitted data, for webapps and modules, use the data.data variable. See Reference
While this is now available for all users it is still in Beta and we value any feedback or reports of issues as at 14th October 2024. It's currently free to use but will soon be billed as a usage metric (we expect to merge it with API Calls). We will provide information and warning prior to making it billable.
Integration Automations are a quick and easy way to connect Siteglide with other Apps. They can be added in various places in Siteglide including:
Forms
WebApps
Modules
eCommerce
Just look out for the Automations tab (for WebApps and Module click the blue View Table button at the top of the List View of items):
You just need to give the Integration a name and select which Siteglide Trigger you want to use:
Then Select the App you want to connect to for the Action:
Then complete the rest of the steps that are typically unique to that app (Slack is just one example):
Then Connect your Account (SSO/OAuth):
Finally you can customise the Action using Siteglide Data:
Once you've read how our , you're ready to start creating your own. Below is an example of an API call in Automations.
This example will create a customer in Stripe, where the email address is WebApp fief'webapp_field_1_1':\
When you first set up your Site's automation emails, you may find there is a "Via SendGrid" warning for the email in the recipient's mailbox.
This warning means you haven't authorized SendGrid to deliver emails for you, so the mailbox provider considers that sent from SendGrid instead of your brand.
To authorize SendGrid to send emails you need to set up SPF and DKIM for SendGrid on your domain. This is a process also known as email domain authentication.
Setting up SPF and DKIM for SendGrid has 2 benefits:
your automation emails are more likely to reach the inbox;
the "Via SendGrid" warning is removed, and your emails are perceived as coming from your brand, instead of SendGrid. This boosts user engagement, as the user is more likely to open the email.
This option allows SendGrid to authenticate and configure the DNS changes for you in your DNS without needing to add them manually. Currently, only GoDaddy is supported for this setup method.
See the list of DNS providers that are supported by SendGrid's automated setup.
Manual Setup If Sendgrid cannot automatically finish the setup, you will be taken to the Manual Setup tab where you will be provided with records to add to your DNS manually. If you cannot modify your domain's DNS records, you can email the records to a colleague using the Send To A Coworker tab. The email includes a direct link to the records
Both automatic and manual setup begin the same way with the "Setup steps required for both automatic and manual setup" that follow.
Automatic Security
Automated security is different from automatic setup. Automated security allows SendGrid to handle the signing of your DKIM and the authentication of your SPF with CNAME records. This allows you to add a dedicated IP address or update your account without having to update your DNS records. Find a detailed explanation of how this works on the Sendgrid Documentation. Automated security defaults to On. If your DNS provider does not accept underscores in CNAME records, you will have to turn automated security off and use MX and TXT records.
If you turn off automated security, you are responsible for managing and updating the MX and TXT records yourself.
Your site's Sendgrid credentials need to be generated by Siteglide Support.
See below the different options to request the logins:
Portal Ticket: Submit a portal ticket
Discord Agency Channel: Message on your agency channel for support
Info Required:
Site name or ID
Optional: Additional context to the issue you are facing or reason for requesting logins.
Log in to the SendGrid dashboard using your credentials.
Go to Settings/Sender Authentication/Domain Authentication, and click Get Started.
In Advanced settings, there is an option to turn on "link branding". We strongly suggest you leave this off (unless you know what you are doing), as it can cause problems when linking to assets on our CDN from emails.
SendGrid has now created a list of records to add to your DNS including the 2 DKIM records using selectors s1 and s2 respectively.
If you chose the Automatic setup option and your hosting partner is GoDaddy. SendGrid will automatically make the DNS changes for you.
Although a DMARC record is provided by Sendgrid, it's not required to verify your domain. However it is still important for email delivery and brand reputation as it tells a participating receiving email server what to do with a message that fails both SPF and DKIM validation. It can protect you from having malicious people sending emails from your domain.
Please note: "v-DMARC1;p=none" is the simplest policy and organisations may have stricter DMARC requirements. Therefore please confirm before adding or updating an existing DMARC record.
Once you add the DNS records to your domain, return to the SendGrid App UI and click Verify to finalise the setup.
Go to Settings/Sender Authentication/Select the Domain and then select Verify. \
\
Enter the domain you want to authenticate (e.g. siteglide.info) and click the Next button.
Staging sites are great as a place to start building your business, or as a place to develop new updates to a site before they're ready to see the world. However, what if you did a Site Copy of your live site to test a new feature on staging and accidentally sent an unfinished email to real customers?
Don't panic! That can't happen!
Staging sites deliberately block outgoing emails.
Okay so how do we test?
Click the "Configuration" tab:
Enter the email addresses of anyone who would like to receive test emails for this site. It doesn't matter if they are Siteglide users or not: e.g. example@siteglide.com,example@agency.com,example@client.com
When you get to step 3, you'll realise that being added to this list can mean getting a lot of emails, so make sure you get permission before adding people to this list or they may be annoyed!
E.g. Test submitting a Form which has an Email Automation attached, even if your email address is not in the to field.
You'll see that if you added your email in step 2, you'll receive all emails on the site, regardless of who they are addressed to. This makes it easy to test emails without running lots of email accounts for different user types.
If you're getting all the emails, how do you check if they go to the right person?
When the email is blocked from sending as normal, the system adds the address it would have sent to in a production environment in brackets to the subject line on a staging site. You can use this to identify the test email in your inbox or check if it is sending to the correct address before going live.
