Create an automation
You create automations by describing them to the Companion. There is no form to fill in and nothing to draw.
Ask the Companion
- Open the Companion.
- Start with "Create an automation that…", then describe what you want in plain language. Say what should start it and what should happen.
- The Companion asks permission to save it. Select Approve.
- It replies with a link to the new automation. Open that link and check the diagram — it is a far easier read than the approval prompt.
The approval prompt shows the automation as raw configuration, which is hard to read. You do not need to work through it. Approve it, then open the automation and check the diagram shows roughly what you asked for — the trigger you expected, and steps that sound right.
If it is not quite right, say so to the same Companion — "change it to only email the account owner" — and it will update the automation in place.
Useful things to say:
- "When a meeting summary is ready, email it to the account team."
- "Every Monday at 9am, send me a summary of last week's customer calls."
- "One hour before a customer meeting starts, send me a prep note with the account's recent history."
Unless you ask for something else, a new automation is active the moment it is saved. Say "create it as a draft so I can review it first" if you would rather check it before it starts.
The Companion can also tell you what is available. Ask it "what events can an automation listen for?" — there is no page in Harmony that lists them.
Triggers
Every automation begins with exactly one trigger. There are three kinds, and picking the right one is most of the work:
| Trigger | Starts the automation |
|---|---|
| On event | Each time something happens in Harmony or a connected tool |
| On schedule | Over and over on a timetable, such as every morning at 09:00 |
| On anchored time | A set time before or after a moment in your calendar |
You do not choose this from a menu — describe the timing to the Companion and it picks the trigger. The rest of this section explains what each one does, so you can tell whether you got the one you meant.
When something happens
The automation waits for an event and runs each time that event happens.
Harmony has two events of its own:
| Event | Happens when |
|---|---|
| Summary ready | A summary has finished generating for a conversation |
| Conversation ended | Harmony has finished processing a conversation, after a call, video meeting, or chat |
Both fire when Harmony finishes its own work, not at the moment the call ends — a conversation has to be ingested and processed first. Re-processing a conversation fires Conversation ended again, so an automation on it can run more than once for the same meeting.
Your connected tools add more. A connected calendar, for example, adds events for a meeting being created, changed, or cancelled. Which ones you get depends on which integrations your workspace has installed, so ask the Companion what is available to you.
An automation runs on events you caused — your meetings, your calls, your conversations. It does not run on a colleague's meeting, even if you can see that meeting in Harmony. If you want the same automation for a teammate, they need their own copy.
Repeating schedule
The automation runs over and over on a timetable — every morning, every 15 minutes, every Monday.
Describe the timing in ordinary words and let the Companion set it up. It writes the timetable in a compact format that you will see on the trigger, so it helps to recognise a few:
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
0 9 * * * | Every day at 09:00 |
*/15 * * * * | Every 15 minutes |
0 9 * * 1 | Every Monday at 09:00 |
Times run in the timezone the automation was given, or UTC if none was chosen — worth saying which one you want. The shortest gap you can ask for is one minute.
Anchored time
This one runs before or after a moment that is already in your calendar or your data — the most useful trigger for anything resembling a reminder.
- Twenty minutes before a meeting starts
- Thirty minutes after a meeting ends
- The morning before a scheduled renewal call
It is made of two parts: the moment it counts from, and how far away from it to run — a number, a unit of minutes, hours, or days, and whether that is before or after. The example below counts from each calendar event's start time and runs 20 minutes before it.
A few behaviours worth knowing:
- If the moment has already passed when Harmony finds out about it, the automation runs as soon as it can.
- If it is more than about a day overdue, it is skipped rather than run very late.
- If the meeting moves, the automation moves with it. If the meeting is cancelled, it does not run.
Tool blocks
Every tool your Companion can use is also available to an automation as its own block — creating an email draft, adding a task, updating a record in a connected app, and so on. An automation can call one directly, without going through an agent.
It differs from a Run agent step in two ways:
| Run agent | A tool block | |
|---|---|---|
| How the work is decided | The agent works out what to do, and may use several tools | Runs one tool, exactly as configured |
| Permission | The agent has to hold the tool. Until it does, the run stops and waits for you | Nothing to grant, so nothing to stop for |
A handful of tools are deliberately unavailable — the ones that create or edit automations. An automation cannot rewrite automations.
Seeing what is available
The catalog depends on which integrations your workspace has installed, so it differs between workspaces. Two ways to check yours:
- Open any automation, select the Editor tab, and read the catalog on the right. It lists every block available here, grouped by kind, with tool blocks under action. It is a reference list only — you cannot drag anything onto the canvas.
- Or ask the Companion: "which tools can an automation use?"
The other blocks
Besides tool blocks, three blocks do the rest of the work. You do not have to choose these yourself — the Companion picks them — but you will recognise them on the diagram:
| Block | What it does |
|---|---|
| Run agent | Hands the task to one of your agents, which can use its tools and can judge what to do |
| If | Checks a condition. It can branch — one path when true, another when false — or act as a guard, letting the automation continue only when the condition holds |
| LLM extractor | Pulls specific details out of text and passes them on as structured data. It only reads and reformats; it cannot use tools or take any action |
Switch on or off
On the automation's row in the Studio list, open the ⋮ menu and choose Activate or Deactivate. The same options are in the menu on the automation's own page.
- Active — it is listening, and will run.
- Inactive — it is switched off and will not run. Nothing is deleted.
Deactivate an automation when it is doing the wrong thing. It is the fastest way to stop it while you work out what to change.
Make changes
Ask the Companion to change it, the same way you asked for it in the first place — "change my meeting summary automation to only email the account owner". The Editor tab shows the result but cannot be edited directly; you can drag blocks around to read them more easily, and nothing you move is saved.
The Details tab shows when it was created, when it was last changed, and its version number. There is no history of past versions to roll back to.
Delete
Open the ⋮ menu on its row and choose Delete, then confirm. This cannot be undone, and it removes the automation's run history with it. If you only want it to stop, Deactivate it instead.