Overview
The Delay action pauses an automation for a specified time period (Delay For) or until a specific date and time (Delay Until) before continuing. This lets you precisely schedule actions within your automation workflows.
💡 Note: Be sure to explore other automation actions & triggers.
Use the Delay Action
Add steps and triggers to build your automation flow.
Click ➕ Add Step and choose the Delay action.
Insert the Delay Action directly before the action you want to delay.
Configure the Delay action in the right sidebar.
Add more steps and finish the setup.
Delay (Settings)
Connector options give you full control over the Delay action:
🏷️ Field | 🔤 Description |
Delay For | Pause the automation for a specific duration of time (seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months) before continuing to the next action. |
Delay Until | Pause the workflow until a specific date and time, which can be sourced dynamically from previous steps. |
Use Cases
Not sure how to use the Delay action? Start with the ideas below.
Delay Task Processing
Scenario: A support team doesn’t want to immediately assign newly created tasks. They wait 12 hours to see if more context or similar tasks appear.
Steps:
Trigger: Task Added (when a new ticket or task is created).
Delay For: 12 hours (to collect additional details or related tasks).
Run Agent Command: Use a task triage agent trained on past tickets to analyze keywords and suggest the best assignee/solution.
Assign Task: Automatically assign the task to a team member.
Set Up Drip Campaigns
Scenario: A marketing team plans a series of product announcements to be published on different platforms in a staggered fashion.
Steps:
Schedule Trigger: Set for the first product announcement.
Create Post: Publish the initial announcement on X/Twitter.
Delay For: Pause for a specific period before the next announcement.
Create Post: Publish the second announcement to another platform.
Delay For: Pause for a specific period before the next announcement.
Create Post: Publish the final message, completing the drip campaign.
Follow-up with New Leads
Scenario: A salesperson sends an email to a lead. They want to wait 48 hours before sending a follow-up to avoid appearing too pushy.
Steps:
Send Email: Send a personalized email to a lead.
Delay For: Wait for 48 hours to give the lead time to respond.
Find Email(s): Search Gmail for replies from the lead.
Branch:
If a reply is found:
Add Task: Automatically create a new task in a tracker project.
Assign Task: Assign the task to a salesperson.
If no reply is found:
Send Email: Send a follow-up email using a template.
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