Automation Rules
Automation rules are simple trigger → action pairs: when something happens on an offboarding, PurpletGo does something in response, without anyone having to remember to do it manually. Each rule has exactly one trigger and one action.
Triggers
- Status changes to a stage - fires the moment an offboarding moves into Pending, Notice Period, IT Revocation, Asset Recovery, or Completed
- N days before exit date - an hourly check that matches offboardings by their exit date. The number of days is a whole number from 0 (the exit day itself) to 365. An offboarding started after the day the rule was due still gets it, up to its exit date
- N days after exit date - same idea, running after the exit date has passed, for up to 7 days after the day it is due
Days are counted in your organisation's time zone (Settings → General → Time zone): a rule due on a date runs within the hour after that date begins there. An offboarding with a time zone of its own (for someone who works elsewhere, set in the wizard or when editing the offboarding) counts its days in that zone instead.
Each day-based rule runs once per offboarding and exit date. If the exit date changes after the rule has run:
- Send in-app notification and Send email run again, once for the new date, so a reminder follows the date. Moving the date back to one the rule already ran for does not run it again.
- Advance to next stage and Assign checklist template run once per offboarding, whatever the exit date later becomes.
An exit date moved into the past gets no "days before" reminders: the scheduled access revocation is held for confirmation instead. An offboarding started on its own last day still gets them, the next day at the latest.
- All checklist items complete - fires when the last open item on the offboarding's checklist is closed: ticked off or marked not needed, or completed by its linked record or a resolved IT ticket. Editing an item that's already done doesn't fire it again
Actions
- Send in-app notification - to all members, or just Admins (including Super Admins), HR, or Managers of your organisation. You can use
{{employee_name}}and{{exit_date}}in the title - Send email - to the employee's manager, the HR team, or the departing employee. A subject and a body are required. Supports
{{employee_name}},{{exit_date}}, and{{employee_email}}in the subject and body - Assign checklist template - adds the template's tasks to the offboarding. Tasks the offboarding already has (same wording, ignoring case and extra spaces) are skipped, so a rule that fires twice never duplicates tasks
- Advance to next stage - moves the offboarding to the next pipeline stage, if that stage's requirements are met (the same checks as moving it by hand). A blocked move is recorded in the audit log and does not count as a run: a day-based rule tries again every hour while it is due, and the audit log gets a new entry only if the reason changes
Who "the employee's manager" is
When the offboarding has a Manager's email (set in the wizard, by editing the offboarding, or through the API), PurpletGo emails that address. Otherwise the manager is the person named as manager on the departing employee's record in the employee directory (synced from your HRIS or entered by hand). A manager recorded as an email address (BambooHR does this) is used as it is; for a name, PurpletGo emails the member of your organisation with exactly that name, or else the directory entry with that name. The manager is never the departing employee themselves.
If no manager is recorded, or the name matches no one, or more than one person, the email goes to your organisation's Admins and Super Admins instead, and the email says why. The HR team option sends to everyone with the HR role in your organisation, or to your admins if there is no one. Roles are those people have in this organisation.
There's no webhook action, no IT-ticket action, and no way to add extra conditions to a rule beyond its trigger - what you see in the rule builder is the full set of triggers and actions available today.
Creating a rule
Open automation settings
Navigate to Settings → Automations and click New Rule. Viewing and managing rules needs the Manage organisation settings permission: Admins and Super Admins by default, or a custom role that grants it.
Name it and pick a trigger
Give the rule a name, then choose a trigger. For a stage-change trigger, pick the stage; for a day-based trigger, enter the number of days (1 to 365).
Pick an action
Choose what should happen, and fill in the fields for it - recipients, message text, or which checklist template to assign. The rule is checked when you save: a missing stage, day count, email subject or body, or a template that doesn't exist is refused with a message saying what to fix.
Save
The rule is active immediately and applies to future events - it won't retroactively fire for things that already happened before you saved it.
Each rule has a toggle to pause it without deleting it, and shows how many times it's fired and when it last ran.
Dry run
The play icon next to a rule opens a dry run. Pick an offboarding (your newest one is the default) and PurpletGo shows what this one rule would do for it, without sending or changing anything:
- for an email: who it would go to (and why, if it would fall back to your admins), with the subject and body filled in
- for a notification: its text and who would get it
- for a checklist template: the tasks that would be added, and the ones skipped because the offboarding already has them
- for a stage change: the stage it would move to, and whether the stage's requirements allow it
A dry run works on paused rules too, and only ever looks at the rule you picked. It is recorded in the audit log.