How do automations work?

Automations run the same tasks you'd normally do in Chat, but on autopilot — on a schedule or in response to events.

What's the point of automations?

If you find yourself asking Novica the same thing every day — like "What were yesterday's sales?" — you shouldn't have to keep asking. Set up an automation and it runs for you.

  • Get a daily sales summary every morning at 9am
  • Get low-stock alerts every 6 hours
  • Get a weekly traffic report every Monday
  • Get notified when a high-priority support ticket comes in

What are skills?

Skills are the building blocks of automations. A skill is a saved instruction that tells Novica how to do a specific task.

  • Name — something descriptive like "Daily Sales Summary"
  • Instruction — the detailed prompt (what to pull, how to format it)
  • Integrations — which tools it needs (Shopify, GA4, etc.)

You can create skills two ways:

  • From Chat — ask a question you like, then click "Save as Skill" to capture the pattern
  • Manually — go to Automations → Skills → Create Skill

How do I create an automation?

1

Go to Automations

Navigate to Automations and click "Create Automation".

2

Pick your skills

Choose one or more skills. Each skill becomes a step that runs in order.

3

Set a trigger

Choose when it should run:

  • Manual — you click a button to run it
  • Schedule — daily, weekly, hourly, or a custom cron expression
  • Event — when something happens (new order, new ticket, etc.)
  • Webhook — triggered by an external HTTP request
4

Enable it

Toggle the automation on. You can also run it manually first to test.

What are some real automations I can set up?

Morning sales digest

  • Trigger: Every day at 9am
  • What it does: Pulls yesterday's sales from Shopify — total revenue, order count, top products, and comparison to the day before
  • Why: Start your day knowing exactly how the store performed

Low stock alert

  • Trigger: Every 6 hours
  • What it does: Checks Shopify inventory, flags anything below 10 units, suggests reorder quantities
  • Why: Never get caught off guard by stockouts

Weekly traffic report

  • Trigger: Every Monday at 10am
  • What it does: Pulls GA4 data — traffic by source, top pages, conversion rate, week-over-week comparison
  • Why: Spot trends without logging into Google Analytics

Abandoned cart follow-up check

  • Trigger: Daily
  • What it does: Checks Klaviyo flow performance for your abandoned cart sequence — open rate, click rate, recovery rate
  • Why: Know if your recovery emails are actually working

Support escalation summary

  • Trigger: End of day
  • What it does: Pulls all Gorgias tickets still open, sorted by wait time. Highlights anything waiting over 24 hours
  • Why: Make sure nothing falls through the cracks

How do I know if an automation ran?

  • Go to the Activities tab on the Automations page
  • You'll see every run with its status: running, complete, or failed
  • Click any run to see step-by-step logs — what the agent did, what data it pulled, how long each step took

What if an automation fails?

  • Check the step logs to see exactly where it broke
  • Common causes: an integration got disconnected, the data format changed, or a rate limit was hit
  • Fix the issue and the next scheduled run will pick up normally

Tips

  • Test in Chat first. Get the answer you want in Chat, then save it as a skill and automate it
  • Keep skills focused. One task per skill is more reliable than a skill that tries to do 5 things
  • Start with daily, adjust later. You can always change the schedule once you know how useful the output is