Draft and approve outreach

An automation drafts the reminders, you read each one on a board & a second automation sends only what you drag to approved.

Use case

I want the reminders written for me: when a customer's service is coming due, draft the message. But nothing goes out until I've read it. I've been burned by an auto-sender before.

What Chip asked

Chip checked the workspace first & found nothing already covering outreach. One question then decided the whole shape: where the person sits.

"When you approve a message, should it send immediately, or do you want a batch you release together?"

The answer: "Immediately when I flip it. I approve them one at a time as I read."

That answer is why the approval itself became the trigger.

What got built

• A space called Outreach Approvals, holding everything below.
• A proposed-messages table. One row per drafted message: recipient, channel (email or SMS), subject, body, proposed date, a status of draft, approved, sent or rejected & the time it went out.
• A drafting automation. As customers come due for service, it drafts a subject & body for each. It only ever adds drafts, so running it again is safe.
• A sending automation. It fires the moment a row becomes approved, sends on the row's channel & marks the row sent.
• The Approval Queue, a kanban board with columns for draft, approved, sent & rejected, where you do the reading.

Chip rehearsed both automations with sending switched off, then switched them on.

How it runs now. As customers come due, reminders draft themselves & land in the Approval Queue. You read one & drag it to approved; that, and only that, sends it. Nothing leaves draft on its own, and a rejected message keeps its reason instead of disappearing.

Try it

Paste this into Build:

When a customer's service is coming due, draft the reminder for me. Nothing goes out until I've read it. I'll approve them one at a time.