Overview

Users may encounter issues when using robots to include records in a Play or remove records from Playbooks, where the robot is not behaving as expected and is not enrolling/unenrolling the correct records or leads. They may face any of the following symptoms:

• Records/leads that do not match the robot's filter are being included in a play.

• Records/leads that match the filter are not being included in the play.

• Records/leads that match the filter are not being removed from Playbooks. 

• Robot is not working - records not being removed.

This article describes the troubleshooting process that should be followed to find the root cause for this issue. 

Flowchart

Instructions

Check if the Robot is On

If records that match the robot's filter criteria are not being included in a Play or unenrolled from Playbooks, it is possible the robot is not currently enabled. When creating a new Robot, the Robot is OFF and listed in the lowest priority until it is activated. The status (On/Off) of a Robot can be confirmed in the Robot tab of the Playbooks Manager App.

Check the Robot's Configuration

It is possible the Robot's configuration does not match your expectations of its behavior. Review the Robots Overview article and check the configuration of the robot to ensure that the filters and actions that are currently selected are aligned with the records that want to be added to a Play/unenrolled from Playbooks. When adding records to a play, make sure that the Allow Action to Repeat setting is enabled. If it is not, the record will not be acted upon until it requalifies. Also, make sure that the Allow Action to Reverse is disabled. Otherwise, the action will be reversed once the person no longer matches the criteria. 

Note: Making minor changes to the filter criteria of the robot can produce better results. For example, instead of using the "on or before" operator for a Created Date, use "before". Sometimes, the operators used in the robot criteria section are not inclusive. Refer to "Is At Most" Operator in Robot Not Working for Date Field for more information.

Check if Robot Can Be Edited

Access the Playbooks Manager app, go to the Robots tab and try to quickly enable or disable the robot you are having issues with. Also, try to modify and/or clone the existing robot. If you are not able to do any of these actions (the status of the robot does not change, a new robot is not created, changes to an existing robot are not saved), there is an infrastructure issue that needs to be reported immediately. If you are able to do these actions, continue with the troubleshooting process.

Test the Robot

Make sure that when clicking the TEST THIS ROBOT option, the number of records that will be impacted by the Robot is a reasonable number. If it appears that too many records will be impacted, it is possible that the Filter Criteria are not specific enough. As such, it must be reviewed and modified before testing the robot again and saving any changes.

If it appears that 0 records will be impacted, refer to Robot Is Not Finding Qualifying Records. If the number of pulled records is several thousands, proceed to the next step.

Update the Filter Criteria for a Robot

If the number of qualifying records is more than 2000, it means that the robot will not be able to action the records and you need to narrow down the filtering criteria for a robot by adding more rules.

For more information, refer to the article Robot Is Pulling 2000 Records But Does Not Remove Anything.

If you are already explicitly defining a criterion related to who must own the record in order to qualify, avoid setting the 'Owned By' filter to specific teams. Instead, set it to 'Anyone'.

Also, try adding a filter that explicitly checks that the Playbooks Play Name isn't already the Play you are wanting the records to be enrolled in. This way as records qualify and are enrolled they will no longer qualify for reconsideration later and would allow the Robot to use the 2000 record/user limit to only look at records that may qualify and aren't currently enrolled.

Check If the Robot Has the Correct Priority

Once it has been confirmed that the Robot was configured correctly, the next step is to check if the robot has the correct priority - you will need to review all other Robots that affect the same Play and adjust the order of robots according. It is possible there are other automation rules in place that add records that match different criteria to the same Play. Or, there may be Robots removing records from the same Play or from Playbooks altogether. 

It’s possible for a record to qualify for multiple Robots. The priority of the Robots is given by the order in which they are listed in the Robot tab. The records acquired in the first Robot will be evaluated and actioned first.

If a record that should have been added or removed by your robot has already been actioned by another robot, it will not be actioned by any other robot with lower priority. Because of this, it is recommended that Robots are grouped into buckets by the primary action they will take and prioritize as follows:

1. Call Disposition Robots. These will trigger immediately once the call log is saved.
2. Email Tracking Robots. For the same reason, next group email tracking robots because they will trigger immediately.
3. Enrollment Robots. If the primary action is to enroll records in a Play list those next so that further Robot actions can be taken like updating CRM records.
4. CRM Field Update Robots.
5. Removal Robots. These should be last because once a Robot is removed from Playbooks it can no longer be actioned, unless added back into Playbooks.

Confirm if Records Were Added by Other Methods

If you are facing issues that a robot is not adding records to Plays, it is possible any of the following happened:

• A record that matched the robot's criteria was added to the Play recently. After this, the record's detail changed and it no longer qualifies. 
• A record was added manually to a Play by other teammates.
• There are old records that have not been actioned that were added to the Play before the robot was created. 

Refer to Wrong Records Are Enrolled by Robot for more information. 

Contact Playbooks Support

You should contact Playbooks Support in any of the following situations:

• Your robot previously worked as expected, and all of a sudden it stopped working without any configuration changes.
• Your robot cannot be enabled/disabled, cloned, or modified, even though you have access to the Robots tab in the Playbooks Manager app. You are also unable to create new robots. 
• You have confirmed that the robot is configured correctly, that there are no robots affecting the same Play, and that records have not been added or removed by other methods. 

In your request make sure to describe the issue you are experiencing with as many details as possible and include:

• The robot's name
• Screenshots of qualifying records
• Confirmation that no records were added/removed by other methods.