An automation gives Para a saved assignment to carry out without another request from you. For example, after you have refined a status update, you can have Para check the available project documents each weekday and email you material changes. The saved brief tells it what to do; the schedule tells it when. See the status update guide for the full conversation.
Ask Para by email or conversation to create the automation, or create it yourself on Automations. Include the method you want in the saved brief: a scheduled run may start a fresh conversation, so it should not depend on an earlier email being in front of it. Para uses your own project access and connected sources, not someone else’s permissions.
Creating an automation
Describe the assignment
Name the project, sources, review window, and expected result. For a status update, identify which earlier update to compare against, lead with deadlines and decisions, and say what to do when sources are missing or nothing material changed.
Pick a schedule
Choose a recurring schedule or a one-time date. State your timezone, such as America/New_York, and verify it on the saved automation. Recurrences use their configured timezone; set your own in Settings, and check older schedules, which may use UTC. They cannot run more often than every five minutes.
Choose delivery
Choose email, Slack, Teams, or no notification. After Para confirms creation, open Automations and check the brief, enabled status, delivery destination, and next run. If no saved automation exists, the responsibility is not configured.
A schedule is not an event trigger
“Check the Northwind documents every weekday at 9 a.m.” is scheduled work. “Whenever a new vendor questionnaire arrives, prepare a review memo” asks for an event trigger that is not currently supported. A document connection does not itself start work when a file changes. You can instead configure a periodic check of an accessible source, with a clear rule for what to report. It will check at those times, not immediately when an event happens.
There is a specific meeting-ended option: an automation can also run when a meeting Para attended ends. That does not provide a general trigger for new projects, incoming documents, or arbitrary changes in connected systems.
Change or stop standing work
Edit, pause, or delete the assignment on Automations, or ask Para to change the named automation and confirm the result. If you revise a saved method, review the automation’s brief too; updating guidance does not rewrite a separately saved prompt. Pausing future runs does not retract work already delivered.
How delivery works
Automation results always arrive as a fresh message, never as a reply inside another thread. If an automation has nothing worth saying, it may finish quietly: the run is recorded in Activity but nobody is notified.