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An automation is one rule on one form: when a response arrives and these things are true, do this. You can have up to twenty on a form, and each does exactly one thing, so a rule is easy to read and easy to switch off.

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When a rule runs

Automations run once, the moment a response is first submitted.
  • Correcting an answer afterwards does not run them again. If someone edits their response, nothing is sent a second time.
  • A response held back as suspected spam never runs them at all. It is still recorded, and if you restore it the automations do not fire retrospectively.
  • Every run is recorded on the response itself, including the ones that were skipped and the reason why. Open the response and look at its activity if a follow-up did not arrive.

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What a rule can do

Puts a notice in the notification bell for everyone at the practice. You choose the category — Documents, Patients or Staff — and write the headline and message yourself.A practice that has switched that category off in Settings → Notifications will not see it, and it will not appear in the email digest either.
Sends an email to your practice’s own address, or to another address you name. You choose the same category as above, and it obeys the same switches: if email notifications are off, or that category is off, nothing is sent and the run is recorded as skipped.You can include the answers in the email. They are off by default, because the response itself is where they live. Answers are only ever emailed to your practice’s own address, to the address of someone on your team, or to another address that someone allowed to manage forms has confirmed — and that person must still have that permission when the rule runs. See The answers themselves.
Sends the person who filled the form a copy of what they sent, with your own subject and message above it.It only sends when the form collected an email address. If the respondent is one of your patients and has asked not to be emailed directly, they are skipped and the run is recorded as skipped.
Emails the respondent a link to another of your published forms — how a pre-screening becomes a consent, and a consent becomes an intake.Only published forms that are currently accepting responses can be chosen, and only one invitation is ever sent per response, so a rule cannot send the same person two links to the same thing. You can set how many days the link stays valid.
Links the response to a patient’s chart when the email address on the response matches exactly one patient of your practice.It does not copy answers into chart fields — a clinician still reads the response. If nobody matches, or if two patients share that address, nothing is linked and the run is recorded as skipped. That is deliberate: households share an inbox, and a wrong chart is worse than no link.
Adds tags to the contact in your CRM whose email matches the respondent’s. When no contact matches, nothing is created and the run is recorded as skipped.
Opens a task on the matched contact, with a due date and a priority, assigned to that contact’s owner.
Sends the respondent one of your signable documents as a signature request — how a completed intake becomes a signed consent.Only a document that has finished being checked, and that the respondent is the only person to sign, can be chosen; a document that needs a witness or a second signer has a place this rule cannot fill. It goes to the email address on the response, once per response, so correcting an answer never sends a second request. Signature requests are not included in the Free plan: on Free the run is recorded as skipped, with the plan as the reason.
Sets one of your own contact fields on the CRM contact whose email matches the respondent’s — for example Preferred clinic. A field with set choices offers only those choices. When no contact matches, nothing is created and the run is recorded as skipped.
Posts the response to an address you give, so another system can react to it. Team plan and above. See Webhooks below.

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Conditions

A rule with no conditions runs on every submission — which is the commonest thing people want. Add conditions and they read exactly like the sentences on the Logic tab: everything inside a group must be true, and any one group being true is enough. On a form that produces one, you can also write a condition about the prescreening outcome or the score.
A condition about the score or the outcome is only offered on a form that produces one. If you change the form so it no longer marks answers, a rule that reads the score stops matching, and the tab says the source is gone rather than showing you an empty box.

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The answers themselves

Answers can include health information on any kind of form — an intake questionnaire built as a survey carries as much as a clinical one. So on every form, a rule that would carry the answers somewhere other than your practice’s own inbox asks you to confirm it first, with a tick box on the rule:
  • a copy emailed to the respondent;
  • an email to an address you typed into Send to;
  • a webhook to another system.
An email to your practice’s own address does not ask. Until you tick it, the rule is saved, marked as unfinished, and does nothing. Turning the answers off clears the requirement instead: the rule can still say a response arrived without carrying what was in it. When the rule runs, it checks again before anything is sent:
  • An email to an address you typed goes ahead with answers only if the address is your practice’s own or belongs to someone on your team — or, for any other address, if the person who confirmed it can still manage forms. If they have since lost that permission, or left, the run is recorded as skipped and nothing is sent until someone who may manage forms confirms the rule again.
  • A webhook with answers follows the same rule.
  • For a client whose record is restricted to the team members assigned to them, answers are only emailed to one of those team members. Your practice’s shared inbox, another address and webhooks receive nothing for that client, and the run is recorded as skipped.
Only people who may manage forms can add, change or delete a rule.

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Webhooks

A webhook posts the response to an address you control. It carries the response, the form and the automation as identifiers, plus the outcome or score if the form produces one. The answers themselves are only included if you tick the box and confirm it. We sign every request. Each carries an X-Clinik-Signature header:
The key is your practice’s signing secret, on the Webhook signing secret panel at the foot of the Automation tab. Select Show signing secret to reveal it. Reject anything whose timestamp is more than five minutes old — that is what stops an old request being replayed at you.
1

Give an https address

The address must be https:// on a public host. A plain http:// address, an address on your own local network, and one carrying a username and password are all refused, and the tab says so as you type.
2

Copy your signing secret

Open the Webhook signing secret panel, select Show signing secret, and copy it into your receiving system.
3

Verify, then accept

Check the signature and the timestamp before you act on the contents. Answer with any 2xx status.
Rotating the secret takes effect immediately. The next webhook is signed with the new one, and anything still checking the old one rejects every delivery until you update it. Rotate when a secret has leaked; otherwise leave it alone.

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When a delivery fails

A delivery that is refused with a 4xx is not retried — that status means the far side will never accept it. A timeout, a 408, a 429 or a 5xx is retried six times over about a day, spaced further apart each time, and then given up on. Every attempt is recorded on the response, so a webhook that has been failing since Tuesday is visible rather than silently piling up.

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Set it up

1

Open the Automation tab

From the forms list, open the form, then select Automation in the tab strip.
2

Add a rule

Select Add automation. It is created straight away, switched on, with no conditions — so it would run on every submission.
3

Name it

Put something in Name that says what it is for. The list shows it, and so does the record of what ran.
4

Narrow it, if you need to

Under When a response is submitted, select Add a condition. Leave it empty to run on every submission.
5

Choose what it does

Under Then, pick the action and fill in its fields. If something is missing — no subject, no tags, no address — the rule says so in red and does nothing until you finish it.
6

Save

Select Save automation. Unsaved changes beside the button means it has not landed yet. The On switch is separate and takes effect the moment you use it, so you can stop a rule without finishing an edit.

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Start an AI agent from a form

A rule on this tab does one thing. For a workflow with several steps — read the answers, decide, then book, message or open a task — build an AI agent and choose one of the Forms triggers on its Start node: Form response submitted, Screening form result, Quiz scored, Form stopped accepting responses, Form paused for unusual traffic or Form invitation expired unanswered. See AI agents.

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Troubleshooting

Open the response and read its activity. Each run is recorded with its result, and a skipped run says why — no email address on the response, a muted notification category, no matching patient or contact, your plan not including that action, answers headed to an address nobody allowed to manage forms has confirmed, or a client whose record is restricted.
Check Settings → Notifications. Both the master email switch and the category you chose on the rule have to be on. If either is off, the run is recorded as skipped rather than failed.
The form you chose has to be published and still accepting responses. If it has been closed or archived since you wrote the rule, the run is recorded as skipped, and the picker will no longer offer it.
The email address on the response has to match exactly one patient of your practice. No match and two matches both mean nothing is linked — the second on purpose, because guessing between two people who share an inbox would put someone’s answers in the wrong record.
On the Free plan a form can have 2 automations, and the line under the button says so. Delete one to add another, or upgrade — every paid plan has no plan limit (a form can hold up to 20 automations on any plan). If your clinic moves to Free with more than two on a form, nothing is deleted: the first two, in the order they are listed, keep running, and the rest wait until the plan includes them again.
Sending a webhook needs the Team plan or higher. You can write the rule, but it will not be saved until your plan includes it.
Sign the exact bytes you received, not a re-encoded copy: the signed value is the timestamp, a full stop, then the raw request body. Compare against the v1= part, and check the t= part is recent.