A Worker Bee is an automation. It waits for something to happen in your beehive, such as a new contact, a payment or a closed case, and then does something useful: creates a task, emails a colleague, posts to a team channel, messages the supporter, or sends the details to another system.

Think of the follow-up your team does by habit. “When a regular gift starts, someone sends a thank-you and books a call.” A Worker Bee can make sure the first step always happens, and the call is on someone’s task list.

Triggers, filters and actions

Every Worker Bee has three parts, which match the steps of the wizard:

  • A trigger: the event it watches for, such as Payment created or Membership renewal due. If you choose several events, ThirdSectorBee creates one bee for each.
  • Filters (optional): conditions that narrow which events it acts on, such as “Payment method is DirectDebit”. Without a filter it acts on every event of that kind. Only some kinds of filter condition match today; see Which filters work today.
  • Actions: what it does. Your beehive’s actions come from the modules you have switched on, and you only see actions you have permission to use. See Actions and their settings.

Actions can include details from the event, like a supporter’s first name, using data tokens.

Single set or swarm

Most bees run all their actions each time they fly. A swarm instead has branches, checked in order. Only the first branch whose conditions match runs its actions, and a branch with no conditions acts as a fallback for everything else. Swarms suit “if this, do that; otherwise do something else”. See Choose between actions with a swarm.

A bee that emails or texts a contact must name the consent purpose it sends under, and checks the contact’s recorded consent every time. Only a recorded “ok” for that purpose and channel allows a send. A Transactional option skips the consent check for receipts and confirmations, but contacts recorded as a child or as deceased are never messaged, whatever is chosen. See Email or text a contact.

Who a bee acts as

The person who creates a Worker Bee is its owner, and it acts with that person’s access. It can only use actions the owner has permission for, only sees fields the owner can see, and stops working if the owner loses access. See Worker Bees permissions.

Flight history

Each time a bee runs, it records a flight for every action: whether it Succeeded or Failed, what triggered it and when. Temporary problems are retried automatically. Active means a bee is ready to run, not that its actions are succeeding, so check the flight history after setting one up.

Ready to build one? Start with Create a Worker Bee.