Auto-send Routine Drafts
When AI agents and your assistant draft messages to clients, each one normally waits in Actions for a person to publish it. Auto-send lets the routine ones, like "we've received your request", go out on their own after a short wait, so clients aren't kept waiting for a click. Anything involving money, dates, promises or tone still waits for a person.
Overview
Every portal message and ticket reply drafted for a client is sorted when it is saved: it either needs a person, or it is routine and could send on its own. You can see which in Actions, along with every reason a draft needs a person.
With auto-send off (the default), every draft waits for a person, exactly as before. With it on, routine drafts send themselves after the wait you choose, unless someone holds them first.
What Counts as Routine
A draft is routine only when none of these apply. Any one of them means it needs a person:
| Needs a person when… | Shown in Actions as |
|---|---|
| The risk check flagged money, a promise, tone, or sensitive content | the flag, e.g. mentions money, makes a promise |
| The risk check couldn't run | not risk-checked |
| It isn't addressed to exactly one person (for example, everyone at a client) | recipient unclear or more than one person |
| The client was added in the last 30 days | new client |
| It is the first reply from your team on a ticket | first staff reply |
| The ticket's priority is Urgent | urgent ticket |
| The message is signed by a named person ("Thanks, Sarah") | signed by a person |
| It is an email and only portal messages may send on their own | |
| The client is set to never auto-send | client set to never auto-send |
| Someone edited it in Actions | edited |
"Makes a promise" means a commitment your firm could later fail to keep: a future date or deadline ("by Friday", "your site will be live Monday"), a promised action or refund, a guarantee, or a claim that a problem is fixed or resolved. Notices that something is ready, posted, uploaded or received ("your files are in Files", "your invoice is posted") are not promises.
The risk check needs a TypeSafe API key under Settings → Integrations → AI Connection → Chat tool router. Without one, no draft can be checked, so none is routine.
Turning It On
Only administrators can change this setting.
- Go to Settings → Integrations → AI Connection.
- In Draft auto-publish, set Auto-publish to Also: routine client drafts send on their own after a delay.
- Choose how long to wait under Wait before a routine client draft sends.
- Click Save draft policy.
Only drafts saved after you turn it on can send on their own. Routine drafts already waiting stay in Actions for a person, so turning it on never sends a backlog.
To turn it off, set Auto-publish back to Off — every draft waits for a person (default).
Settings
- Name
Auto-publish- Type
- select
- Description
Off — every draft waits for a person (default); Staff-to-staff notes the scan found nothing in (internal notes you write yourself publish at once); or Also: routine client drafts send on their own after a delay, which includes the staff-note option.
- Name
Wait before a routine client draft sends- Type
- select
- Description
No wait, 2 minutes, 5 minutes (default), 10 minutes, 15 minutes or 30 minutes. This is how long someone has to Hold a draft before it goes out.
- Name
Routine client drafts could send by- Type
- select
- Description
Portal message only (default) or Portal message or email. Email drafts to clients are never routine unless you allow email here.
Sending Soon and Hold
In Actions, routine drafts that will send on their own are listed at the bottom under Sending soon, each showing the time it will send (for example "sends at 3:42 PM"). They don't count toward the Actions badge, because nobody needs to do anything.
Open one to read it in full. The pane says "Routine: sends on its own at 3:42 PM unless you hold it. Publish sends it now." Then:
- Publish sends it right away.
- Hold stops it from sending. It moves back into the list as Needs a person: held and waits for someone to publish or discard it.
- Discard dismisses it without sending.
Anyone who can see a draft in Actions can hold it. Holding never sends or deletes anything.
Who It Is Sent As
- A draft you wrote with your assistant is sent as you.
- A draft an AI agent wrote is sent as the client's first account manager (listed under the client's Contacts → Account Managers) who is a member of staff.
After it sends, it appears on the Done tab as "auto-sent as <name>", and the send is recorded in the audit log like any other publish.
Checks Right Before Sending
Every draft is checked again just before it goes out. If anything no longer holds, the draft is held for a person with the reason shown, never sent anyway and never silently dropped:
| Held because | Shown as |
|---|---|
| The client was set to never auto-send after the draft was saved | client set to never auto-send |
| The client has no account manager on staff to send it as | no Primary Contact to send as |
| The agent that wrote it was paused or revoked | agent paused / agent revoked |
| It is more than a day old, for example because scheduled tasks stopped running | too old to auto-send |
| Publishing it failed, for example because the recipient no longer exists | auto-send failed |
If someone edits or decides a draft while it is waiting, their action wins and nothing is sent automatically.
Never Auto-send to a Client
For clients who should always get a personal reply, such as your most important accounts, turn auto-send off for that client alone:
- Open the client and go to the Contacts tab.
- Open the Account Managers sub-tab and click Default Assignees.
- Turn on Never auto-send to this client.
- Click Save Default Assignees.
Drafts for that client always wait in Actions, whatever the site setting is. You need permission to edit clients to see the Default Assignees button.
Is It Helping?
Under Draft auto-publish, Client-facing drafts, last 30 days shows:
- Time until the client sees it: the median time from draft to published, and how long the slowest 10% took. Auto-sent drafts are shown separately.
- Published without edits: how often a person published a draft exactly as written.
- Would have sent on their own: the share of drafts that were routine, and the most common reasons the rest needed a person.
If most drafts are published without edits and clients still wait hours, the review step is adding delay without catching much. That's a sign auto-send could help.
Notes & Gotchas
- Routine means ordinary, not safe from every mistake. Keep an eye on the Done tab after turning it on; you can mark items Checked as you spot-check them.
- Old drafts keep their original sorting. A draft is sorted when it is saved, so changing a setting affects new drafts, not ones already waiting.
- Messages written in the Messages composer are never auto-sent. They are yours to send from Messages.
- Auto-send runs on WordPress scheduled tasks. On a quiet site these run when someone visits, so a draft may go out a little after its time.