Delay steps allow you to postpone or change the time of the next step within an automation. There are 3 options:
- send immediately
- insert value
- use expression
Immediately
This value does not introduce any waiting time and next step will run right away. This would be equivalent to not introducing a delay step.
Insert value
This option will schedule the next step to run after a specific time has passed. It can be minutes, hours or days.
Usually you use this step to schedule a message or an action in the future, which is conditioned by a change in user status or another event.
Example: send email with a delay of 45 minutes after user adds to cart, if purchase has not been done.
Expression
The limitations that insert value option are mostly related to time of day or time of week. Because insert value refers all the time to previous event time, you can’t use any value to change to work hours for example.
Using expression you can schedule steps to execute without referring to previous step time. Currently they work only in English.
For example, what you can do with expressions:
- schedule a message to be sent only on Monday, regardless day of the week user does a specific event
- schedule a SMS to only be sent within a set of normal time (not during the night)
Expressions accept the following formats:
- next [X] [at Y]
- next (day of week) at (time HH:mm)
- next week on (day of week) at (time HH:mm)
- after [X] days [at Y]
- after 4 days
- after 4 days at (time HH:mm)
(day of week) can be any of: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday
(time HH:mm) must have a simple format 12:34, 18:30 . Please do not use AM/PM, just full hour
Time must be UTC time. So make sure you set the right values.