Automation Settings Explained: When, Who and What Each Automation Sends

In the dashboard: Automations → Create, or click an automation → Edit

15 min read

An automation is an email, text or webhook that Hive Inspect sends for you when something happens to an inspection. A booking is confirmed, a report is published, a payment is late. You set it up once, and Hive sends it for every inspection from then on. This page explains every setting you see when you create or edit an automation, in the order they appear. The settings under Advanced Settings (services, filters, sleep hours and send conditions) have their own page: Automation Settings: Advanced.

New to automations? You don’t have to build them from scratch. Import ready-made ones from the Automation Starter Pack first, then come back here to change them.

Every automation answers four questions

Question	Setting	Example
When does it send?	Event Type and Delay	24 hours before the inspection
How does it send?	Channel	Text message
Who gets it?	Recipient	The client
What does it say?	Message Content	”Hi Sarah, see you tomorrow at 9 AM…”

Everything else is optional. Most automations never need Advanced Settings at all.

The Automations page

Click Automations in the left menu. You see every automation in your account, one per row.

The buttons at the top

Dedicated Number: get your own phone number for texts. See Your own text number.
Compose: send a one-off email by hand. It is not an automation.
Browse: import ready-made automations from the Automation Template Hub.
Create: build a new automation from a blank form.

The columns

Column	What it shows
Name	The name you gave it. Only your team sees it.
Event Type	What makes it send.
Channel	EMAIL, SMS or WEBHOOK.
Delay	How long after (or before) the event it sends. Immediate means no delay.
Recipient	Who gets it. A green badge with an email address or phone number means one specific address. No recipient means it never sends on its own.
Services	All services, or the services it is limited to.
Status	The on/off switch. Off means it stops sending. See Active.

The filters narrow the list. Recipient Includes has a Custom Email choice that shows automations sent to one specific address. Sort sets the order: Custom order lets you drag rows by the handle on the left; the other choices sort by date created or put active automations first.

Edit, duplicate or delete an automation

Click the ⋮ button at the end of a row.

A window titled Inspection Scheduled - Customer Confirmation with three buttons: Edit, Duplicate and Delete

Edit opens the automation so you can change it.
Duplicate makes a copy named ”… - Copy” with every setting. The copy starts switched off, so clients don’t get two emails while you change it. Switch it on when it’s ready.
Delete removes the automation for good. It also removes its history from every inspection’s Automations page, so you can no longer see what it sent.

To stop an automation, switch it off instead of deleting it. You keep the record of everything it already sent, and you can switch it back on later.

Basic Configuration

This is the first box on the page. It sets when the automation sends and how.

Event Type

The event type is the moment that starts the automation. Click the box to see the list, grouped by kind. Each one has a short description underneath. Type in Search event types… to find one quickly.

Here is exactly when each one sends. “Start time” means the inspection’s scheduled date and time. Scheduling

Event type	Sends when	Can send more than once per inspection?
Inspection Scheduled	The inspection becomes Confirmed. That is when you book it as confirmed, or when you confirm a draft, a waiting booking or an accepted quote.	No
Event Scheduled	A new inspection event (for example a radon pickup) is added to a confirmed inspection. Events added before the inspection was confirmed send when it is confirmed. The delay counts from when the event was added, not from the event’s own time.	Yes, once per new event
Send Inspection Quote	The inspection is put in Review, which means a quote is waiting for the client to accept. If the client accepts (or you move it out of review) before the message goes out, it is not sent.	No
Inspection Rescheduled	The date or time of the inspection changes.	Yes, every reschedule
Inspection Cancelled	The inspection is cancelled or rejected. This includes bookings that were never confirmed. Deleting an inspection does not send it.	Yes, if it is reopened and cancelled again

Actions Confirmation (something the client or you just did)

Event type	Sends when	Can send more than once per inspection?
Agreement Signed	The last unsigned agreement is signed, so every agreement is now signed.	No
Payment Received	The inspection is paid in full.	No
Add-ons Updated	The add-ons on the inspection change, whether the client or you change them.	Yes, every change
Report Published	Any report on the inspection is published. It always waits at least 5 minutes, so the PDF is ready when the client clicks. Reports published within that wait are sent together in one message.	Yes, every publish
Additional Report Added	You upload an additional report, such as a lab result or a third-party PDF.	No
Inspection Complete	Everything is done: the inspection’s end time has passed, it is paid in full, every agreement is signed, and every report is published. If the work is finished early, it waits for the end time.	No

Actions Pending (reminders that stop by themselves when they’re no longer needed)

Event type	Sends	Skipped automatically when
Agreement Not Signed Reminder	The delay you set before the start time	Every agreement is signed, or the inspection has no agreements
Payment Not Received (Pre-Inspection)	The delay you set before the start time	The client has paid, or nothing is owed
Payment Not Received (Post-Inspection)	The delay you set after the start time	The client has paid, or nothing is owed

Pre-Inspection

Event type	Sends	Notes
Pre-Inspection Reminder	The delay you set before the start time	A plain reminder, for example “See you tomorrow at 9 AM”.
Add-ons Upsell	The delay you set before the start time	Only offers add-ons with Allow Upselling turned on. Skipped when there are none left to offer. See Send add-on upsell emails.
Pre-Event Reminder	The delay you set before an inspection event’s start time	For events such as a radon pickup. Each event gets its own reminder. If the event moves, its reminder moves with it. If the event is deleted, its reminder is cancelled.

Post-Inspection

Event type	Sends	Notes
Post-Inspection Follow-up	The delay you set after the start time	Counts from the start time, not the end. A 24-hour follow-up for a 9 AM inspection goes out at 9 AM the next day, even if the report isn’t published yet. For anything that should wait for the report, use Report Published or Inspection Complete instead.

None is at the very bottom of the list. An automation with no event type never sends by itself. It sits on each inspection’s Automations page as Waiting, and you send it by hand with Send Now. Use it for messages you only send sometimes.

The bottom of the Event Type list: the Pre-Inspection group with Pre-Inspection Reminder, Add-ons Upsell and Pre-Event Reminder, the Post-Inspection group with Post-Inspection Follow-up, and None, No automatic trigger (manual use only)

Most messages only go out for confirmed inspections. Except for Send Inspection Quote and Inspection Cancelled, an automation sends only while the inspection is Confirmed. If something happens while the booking is still a draft, waiting or a quote, that message is cancelled. It is not saved for later. For example, if a client pays before you confirm their booking, the Payment Received thank-you is not sent. Reminders (before and after the inspection) are set up when you confirm, so they are not affected.

Active

The Active switch (Run automatically) turns the automation on or off. It is the same switch as the Status column on the Automations page. When you switch it off:

It stops being added to new inspections.
Messages already scheduled for a set time, such as reminders, are cancelled when that time comes. Switching it back on does not bring them back.
Messages still waiting for their event stay waiting. If you switch it back on before the event happens, they still send.
You can still send it by hand with Send Now on an inspection.

Automation Name

Up to 50 characters. Only you and your team see it; clients never do. Use a name that says what it is and who it goes to, such as “Agreement Not Signed - 24 Hour Reminder”, so the list is easy to scan.

Channel

Email: a formatted email with your inspector card added at the bottom.
SMS: a text message. See Your own text number for which number it comes from.
Webhook: sends the inspection details to another app or service (for example Zapier) instead of to a person. See Webhooks. Most inspectors never need it.

To send the same message by email and text, make two automations, one for each channel. Duplicate makes this quick.

Delay

The delay box changes its name depending on the event type:

Label you see	Event types	What the number means
Delay	Event types that react to something happening (Inspection Scheduled, Report Published, Payment Received and so on)	How long after the event to wait. 0 sends straight away.
Send Before Inspection	Agreement Not Signed Reminder, Payment Not Received (Pre-Inspection), Pre-Inspection Reminder, Add-ons Upsell	How long before the start time to send.
Send After Inspection	Post-Inspection Follow-up, Payment Not Received (Post-Inspection)	How long after the start time to send.

Pick Minutes, Hours or Days next to the number. The blue line underneath says in plain words when it will send, for example “Send 24 hours BEFORE the inspection if agreement is not signed”. Read it before you save.

Basic Configuration for Agreement Not Signed - 24 Hour Reminder: Event Type Agreement Not Signed Reminder, Channel Email, and the delay box now labelled Send Before Inspection with 24 Hours and the blue line Send 24 hours BEFORE the inspection if agreement is not signed

Good to know about timing

Booked too late for a reminder? If a “before” reminder’s send time has already passed when the inspection is confirmed, it is skipped. A 24-hour reminder on an inspection booked for 2 hours from now never sends. Hive only sends a late message if it is less than 15 minutes late.
Rescheduled inspections. Reminders before and after the inspection move with the new time automatically. Messages that already sent are not sent again (except Inspection Rescheduled itself).
Report Published always waits at least 5 minutes, even if you set 0.
Sleep hours can hold a message overnight. See Sleep Hours.
Times use your organization’s time zone, set in Org Settings → Scheduling.

Recipient

The second box sets who gets the message. Webhook automations don’t have this box.

You have three choices.

By role

Choose Inspection contact / inspector by role. This is what you want almost every time. Pick one or more roles. For each inspection, Hive sends the message to everyone on that inspection with that role.

Role	Who gets it
Customer	Every client on the inspection. If there are two buyers, both get it.
Buyer Agent	The buyer’s agent on the inspection.
Listing Agent	The listing (seller’s) agent.
Insurance Agent	The insurance agent.
Sub Contractor	The subcontractor added to the inspection. See Automate subcontractor emails.
Lender, Builder, Transaction Coordinator, Attorney, Title Company, Other	The contact added to the inspection with that role.
Inspector	Every team member assigned to the inspection. Team members assigned only to an inspection event do not get it.

No one with that role? Nothing is sent and nothing goes wrong. An automation to the buyer’s agent simply doesn’t send for an inspection with no buyer’s agent.
Several roles picked? Each person gets one copy. Someone who matches two of the roles you picked still gets it only once.
Contact has no email (or no mobile number for a text)? The message shows as Failed on the inspection with “No email address” or “No phone number”. Add the details to the contact, then use Send Now.
Contact unsubscribed from your emails? The email is cancelled for them.
Contact details changed after booking? Hive uses the contact’s details as they are when the message goes out.

The role comes from how the contact was added to the inspection, not from the contacts list. If an agent was added as the listing agent by mistake, the buyer agent emails won’t reach them. Fix the role on the inspection.

Specific email address (or Specific phone number)

Sends every message to one fixed address, such as your office inbox. For texts, this choice reads Specific phone number and takes a US number.

The Recipient box with Specific email address selected and office@example.com typed in

Use it for internal alerts, for example a copy of every new booking to your scheduler.

Placeholders still fill in with the inspection’s details. {{{client_first_name}}} shows the client’s name, even though the client isn’t the one receiving it.
Contact Tag Filters don’t apply, because there’s no contact to check.
No unsubscribe link is added.

None

The automation has no one to send to, so it never sends, not even with Send Now. Use None only while you’re still setting an automation up.

Message Content

The third box is the message itself.

Email

Subject (required): the email subject line. Placeholders work here too.
CC Email (Optional): addresses that get a copy of every email this automation sends. Separate several with commas. If the contact has their own CC addresses saved, they’re added as well, and nobody gets it twice. A typo is caught when you save.
Message Body (required): write the email. The toolbar formats text, adds links, images (up to 10 MB each), videos and tables.

Insert Placeholder adds a detail that fills in for each inspection, such as the client’s name, the address, the date, or a link to sign the agreement or pay. Click where you want it in the message, click Insert Placeholder, and search or pick from the list. The blue i button next to it explains how placeholders work.

The Insert Placeholder list open, with Available Placeholders, a Search placeholders box, the Portal Links group listing Customer Reports Portal, Inspection Review Link, Add-ons Upsell Link, Reports, Payment Link, Customer Agreement Link and Invoice Link, and the Client Information group starting with Client First Name

Never type prices, dates or links into a message by hand. Use placeholders, so every email shows that inspection’s real details. Placeholders have three braces, like {{{inspection_date}}}. Placeholders copied from other software don’t work. The full list is on the Placeholders page under Business Tools.

The email footer is added to the bottom of every automation email. You don’t add it yourself.

A preview labelled Email footer automatically added below: a blue card with a photo placeholder, Inspector Name, Email, License, Credentials and Phone, and the note Inspector name, photo, license, and credentials come from the assigned inspector. Email and phone come from your organization.

The card shows the name, photo, license number and credentials of the first inspector assigned to the inspection. Rows with nothing in them are left out. If no inspector is assigned, the card is left out.
The email and phone on the card are your company’s. To show each inspector’s own email and phone instead, turn on Show the inspector’s own phone and email under Org Settings → Business Management → Inspector Contact Info.
Below the card, a short line says the email was sent on behalf of your company and that replies go to your company email. Emails to contacts also get an Unsubscribe link.

Text message (SMS)

The Message Content box for a text: a Placeholder button, Message Body with the note 160 chars = 1 SMS segment, 1600 max, a text message using placeholders, and the counter 211 characters (2 SMS segments)

Write plain text. Use Placeholder (top right) to add details.
Each 160 characters is one text “segment”. Longer messages are sent as several segments joined together. Keep texts short.
A text can be at most 1,600 characters. Hive won’t save a longer one.
The counter counts what you typed, including the placeholder names. The real text is a different length once the placeholders fill in. A long address or link makes it longer.
Emoji make a segment much shorter (70 characters), so use them sparingly.
Nothing is added to the end of your text. If you want a sign-off such as your company name, type it or use {{{company_name}}}.
Texts come from your dedicated number once it’s approved, or from Hive’s shared number until then. Replies to the shared number don’t reach you.

Webhook

A webhook sends the inspection’s details to a web address instead of to a person. You enter the Webhook URL (it must start with https://), choose which Payload sections to include (Payments carries the payment status, the amounts paid and due, and each payment and refund), and copy the Signing secret into the receiving app so it can check that the data came from Hive. See Webhooks and Verify webhook signatures for the details.

Test before you rely on it

Test buttons are at the top right of the Edit Automation page: Test Email, Test SMS or Test Webhook, depending on the channel. They aren’t on the Create Automation page, so create the automation first.

The Test Email Automation window with an Email Address box, a Select Inspection list with the note The test email will use data from this inspection to fill in placeholders, and Cancel and Send Test Email buttons

Type the email address (or mobile number) to send the test to. Use your own.
Pick an inspection from Select Inspection. Its details fill the placeholders, so pick one that has a client, an agent and a price.
Click Send Test Email (or Send Test SMS).

Good to know:

The test uses the last saved version. Save your changes first, or you’ll test the old wording.
Filters and send conditions are not checked, CC addresses don’t get a copy, and nothing is recorded on the inspection. The test only shows you what the message looks like.

Save your changes

On the Create Automation page, click Create Automation at the bottom. If you have inspections booked already, Hive then asks how to apply it:

New inspections only: it starts with inspections booked from now on.
Include existing future inspections: it is also added to inspections already on your calendar that haven’t started yet. Reminders get their send times right away. Event-based messages (such as Payment Received) send the next time that event happens on those inspections. They don’t send for things that already happened.

On the Edit Automation page, a bar appears at the bottom as soon as you change something. Click Save in it. If you try to leave with unsaved changes, your browser warns you.

A dark bar reading You have unsaved changes with a blue Save button

What changes when you edit an automation

You change	Messages already waiting or scheduled	Messages already sent
Subject, message or CC	Use the new wording	Unchanged
Delay	Reminders already scheduled keep their time. New inspections use the new delay.	Unchanged
Recipient roles	Messages already set up for existing inspections keep their recipients. New inspections use the new roles.	Unchanged
Switch off	Scheduled ones are cancelled when they come due	Unchanged
Send Conditions, Custom Field Filters, Contact Tag Filter	Checked again just before each message goes out, so the new settings apply	Unchanged

See what was sent for an inspection

Open the inspection and click Automations under Quick Actions. Every automation for that inspection is listed with its status:

Status	Meaning
Waiting	Waiting for its event. For example, Report Published stays Waiting until you publish.
Scheduled	Has a set send time and will go out then.
Sent	Sent.
Failed	Couldn’t be sent, for example because the contact has no email address.
Cancelled	Won’t be sent. Either someone cancelled it, or Hive stopped it because it was no longer needed (the agreement was signed, the client paid, a filter didn’t match, the inspection was cancelled and so on). The reason is shown under the message.
Bounced / Spam	The email was sent, but the receiving server rejected it or the person marked it as spam.

From there you can:

Send Now: send a waiting, scheduled or cancelled message straight away. It skips filters and send conditions, but still respects Sleep Hours. During sleep hours it tells you when the message will go out.
Send Again: send a message that already went out once more. It uses the automation’s current wording, so changes you made since the first send are included.
Cancel: stop a message that hasn’t gone out yet.

Common questions

Why didn't my automation send?

Open the inspection, click Automations and find the message. Then check these, in this order:

It isn’t on the list at all. The automation was created after the inspection was booked and you chose New inspections only, it is limited to other services, or the inspection has no one with the recipient’s role.
It says Waiting. Its event hasn’t happened yet. For example, the report isn’t published.
It says Cancelled. Hive stopped it on purpose, and the reason is shown under the message. The most common reasons: the inspection wasn’t Confirmed when the event happened, the reminder was no longer needed (signed, paid), a send condition or filter didn’t match, the automation was switched off, or a reminder’s send time had already passed when the inspection was booked.
It says Failed. Usually the contact has no email address or mobile number. Fix the contact, then click Send Now.
It says Sent but the client didn’t get it. Check their spam folder, and see Why are my emails going to spam.

Why did a client get the same email twice?

Usually two automations do the same job, for example one you imported and another you built yourself. Look on the Automations page for two rows with the same event type, channel and recipient, and switch one off. (A copy made with Duplicate starts switched off, so it only sends once you switch it on.) Also check whether someone clicked Send Again on the inspection. For events that can happen more than once, such as Report Published, turn on Only Trigger Once.

Can one automation send an email and a text?

No. Each automation has one channel. Make one automation for the email and another for the text. Duplicate the email one, change the Channel to SMS, and write a shorter message.

How do I send the report email to the client and the agent?

Pick both Customer and Buyer Agent under Recipient. Each person gets their own copy, with their own link. Many inspectors prefer two automations instead, so the agent’s email can have different wording.

Does the follow-up email wait for the report?

No. Post-Inspection Follow-up counts from the inspection’s start time, so it can arrive before the report is published. To send something only after the report is out, use Report Published with a delay, or Inspection Complete, which waits until the report is published, the invoice is paid and the agreements are signed.

Why didn't the 24-hour reminder go out for a last-minute booking?

The send time had already passed. A reminder set for 24 hours before a 2 PM inspection is due at 2 PM the day before. If you book the inspection after that, the reminder is skipped instead of being sent late. Add a shorter reminder (for example 2 hours before) if you often get last-minute bookings.

I edited the message. Will inspections already booked get the new wording?

Yes, for messages that haven’t been sent yet. Messages already sent keep the wording they were sent with. Send Again uses the new wording.

Where to go next

Automation Settings: Advanced: services, tag and name filters, sleep hours, send conditions, custom field filters, late-added contacts and Only Trigger Once.
Automation Starter Pack: which ready-made automations to import first.
Send add-on upsell emails: one email per add-on, only to clients who haven’t booked it.
Automations FAQ: resending, spam, placeholders and texts.

Scheduling & Booking

Inspection Order Management

Templates

Services & Pricing

Payments & Accounting

Reports & Templates

Communication & Growth

Automation Settings Explained: When, Who and What Each Automation Sends

Every automation answers four questions