Automation

The Automation page gives you an overview of all running follow-up automations and lets you control them manually.

Overview

At the top of the page, you'll see three stat cards:

• Active Deals — Number of deals with a running follow-up sequence
• Pending Jobs — Number of scheduled, not yet executed follow-up jobs
• Next Job — When the next follow-up is due (with deal name). Click the card to open the details of the affected deal

Data is automatically refreshed in the background every 30 seconds.

Filter: Mine / All Deals

Using the Mine / All toggle in the header, you can choose which deals are displayed:

• Mine (default) — Shows only your own deals, i.e. deals assigned to your user
• All — Shows all deals across the entire team/tenant

Your selection is saved and automatically restored on your next visit.

tip

Use the "Mine" filter to focus on your own deals without being distracted by other team members' deals.

Deal Table

The table shows all deals with active automation, sorted by the next follow-up date (earliest first):

Column	Description
Deal	Title of the Pipedrive deal
Person	Linked contact person
User	Assigned user (only visible in "All" mode)
Track	Automation track: Customer or Supplier with domain (e.g. "Supplier (supplier.com)") — see below
Status	Current automation status (see below)
Step	Current follow-up step in the sequence
Next Follow-up	Scheduled time for the next follow-up

Dual-Track: Customer and Supplier

A deal can have one customer track and multiple supplier tracks simultaneously. Each supplier is identified by their email domain — an independent track runs per domain.

• A deal can appear with multiple rows in the table (one per track)
• Each track has its own status, step, and next follow-up date
• Actions like Stop only affect the respective track — the others continue running
• Block affects the entire deal (all tracks)
• Supplier tracks are displayed in the Track column with their domain (e.g. "Supplier (supplier.com)")

The track is automatically determined based on the recipient of the original activity:

• Customer: The recipient is the contact person linked to the deal
• Supplier: The recipient is another external address (e.g. a supplier in CC). The track is assigned to the recipient's domain (e.g. supplier:supplier.com)
• Internal: All recipient domains belong to the own organization (→ no automation, see Email Blacklist)

Email Linking with Pipedrive

When an Outlook connection is active, follow-up emails are automatically displayed in the Email tab of the Pipedrive deal. Vita-Drive.Ai uses Pipedrive's Smart BCC for this: on every send, the deal-specific BCC address is automatically added so that Pipedrive can associate the email with the correct deal.

note

This works in both direct send and draft mode (the BCC address is added to the draft).

Email Threading

Follow-up emails are automatically sent as replies to the latest email in the deal (reply threading). This creates a continuous email conversation in Outlook and Pipedrive instead of separate, isolated messages. The subject is automatically prefixed with "Re:".

Status Values

Status	Meaning
Customer: Follow-up	Activity was classified as a customer inquiry, follow-up sequence is running
Supplier: Follow-up	Activity was classified as a supplier inquiry
Stopped	Automation was stopped (e.g. by customer reply or manually)
Blocked	Deal has been permanently excluded from automation

Actions per Deal

Via the three-dot menu (...) at the end of each row, you can:

• View details — Opens a side panel with all deal information and the activity log
• Send draft — Only visible when a draft is available (send mode "Create as draft"). Sends the prepared follow-up draft
• Stop — Ends the running follow-up sequence for this deal. Already scheduled jobs will be cancelled
• Block permanently — Permanently excludes the deal from automation. The deal will no longer be processed automatically, even on future scans

note

Stop vs. Block: If you stop a deal, it can be picked up again on a subsequent scan. Blocking prevents this permanently.

Deliveries: following up before the date

Activities of type Deadline on a supplier track are treated differently from ordinary reminders. The activity's date counts as the delivery date, and the follow-up happens before it rather than on it.

The reason is simple: "are you still on time?" is worthless on the delivery day itself.

How often we follow up depends on how much time is left. Reminders go out 28, 14 and 7 days before the date, as far as those moments are still ahead:

Time until delivery	Reminders	Count
28 days or more	28, 14 and 7 days before	3
14 to 27 days	14 and 7 days before	2
7 to 13 days	7 days before	1
3 to 6 days	2 days before	1
less than 3 days	immediately	1

For a delivery on 12 October recorded in August, the drafts appear on 14 September, 28 September and 5 October.

note

The delivery date is left alone. Unlike ordinary reminders, Vita-Drive.Ai does not rewrite the activity's date here, because it is the information every reminder is derived from.

Moving the date

Change the date of the deadline activity in Pipedrive and the schedule is recalculated. More time means more reminders again, less time means fewer.

This also applies to follow-ups that have already stopped: a new date starts them again.

When the supplier names a new date

If the supplier replies, the automation stops as always and a review ticket is created. If the reply names a specific new date, it appears in that ticket.

It is not applied automatically. If it is correct, set the delivery activity to that date and the follow-up schedule will follow by itself.

When automation ends by itself

Besides a customer reply, there are three cases in which a follow-up ends without you doing anything.

The deal is won or lost

As soon as a deal is no longer open in Pipedrive, automation ends for all of its tracks. This applies to won and lost deals alike.

It is checked in two places: immediately when you change the deal, and again right before a follow-up is written. The second check also covers deals owned by a colleague who is not connected to Vita-Drive.Ai.

Reopening a closed deal does not restart automation by itself. Start it again if you need it, see below.

Working on after the close

Often the real work starts once a deal is won: ordering from the supplier, chasing the delivery date, asking the customer about a reorder weeks later.

That still works. What matters is when the activity was created:

• An activity you create after the close starts its automation normally, even on a won or lost deal.
• Follow-ups that were already running when the deal closed end with it.

caution

Create a new activity for this. Editing an old one is not enough, not even if you change its date.

The reason: Vita-Drive.Ai adjusts the dates of existing activities itself, for instance to match your business hours. If such a change counted as a start signal, the system could revive itself.

Whatever you put in the activity's description feeds into the email. Write "ask the customer about a reorder" there and the AI picks it up. It knows the deal is already closed and will not ask about the purchase decision again.

Repeated failures

If a follow-up fails permanently several times in a row, for instance because the mailbox connection is no longer valid, the follow-up stops instead of retrying forever. You will find the reason in the deal's activity history.

Supplier without a stored contact

If a supplier track runs without a known supplier address, no email is sent. Instead an activity "Prüfen: Lieferanten-Follow-up ohne Empfänger" is created in Pipedrive and the track stops.

The reason: without a supplier address the email would go to the deal contact, that is, to the customer. The text is written for the supplier but reads plausibly enough that nobody would notice.

Add the supplier as a participant of the activity and the follow-up resumes.

Resuming a Stopped Automation

When an automation has been stopped (e.g. due to a customer reply), you have two options:

Restart the Automation

Change the due date of the source activity in Pipedrive. Vita-Drive.Ai detects the change automatically and restarts the follow-up sequence from the current step — at your chosen date.

Typical workflow:

1. Customer replies → automation stops, "VT Bearbeiten" task is created
2. You read the reply and decide: further follow-up needed
3. You set the due date of the source activity to the desired date
4. Vita-Drive.Ai restarts the sequence automatically on that date

Keep the Automation Stopped

Mark the source activity in Pipedrive as done. The automation stays stopped and will not be restarted.

tip

Use the source activity's due date as a control mechanism: change date = restart, mark as done = finish.

Deal Details

The side panel shows:

• Assigned to — The user the deal is assigned to
• Contact data — Person, email, organization
• Automation status — Current status and step
• Timestamps — Next follow-up and last customer reply
• Action buttons — Send draft, Stop, Block

Activity Log

Below the deal information, you'll see a timeline of all automation actions:

Action	Description
Classification	The AI analyzed the activity and assigned a type (e.g. customer inquiry with confidence score)
Follow-up generated	A follow-up email was created. The subject line is shown in the timeline
Follow-up deferred	The follow-up was postponed (e.g. because a draft hasn't been sent yet)
Automatically stopped	The automation was stopped by the system (e.g. customer reply detected)
Manually stopped	A user manually stopped the automation
VT created	A "VT Bearbeiten" activity was created in Pipedrive. If the customer reply was analyzed by AI, the note contains a summary of the reply (in the customer's language) and optionally a suggested follow-up date
Manually started	A user manually started the automation
Blocked	The deal was permanently blocked
Draft sent	A prepared email draft was sent
Error	An error occurred (details are shown in red)

Example: VT note with AI summary

When a customer reply is detected, Vita-Drive.Ai creates a task in Pipedrive with the following note:

Customer replied: "Re: Angebot Softwarelösung"

Summary: Kunde bittet um mehr Zeit zur Prüfung, erwähnt bevorstehenden Urlaub nächste Woche.

Suggested follow-up: 2026-02-28 (+7 days)

Please review and follow up manually.

The summary is written in the customer's language. The suggested follow-up date only appears when the AI detects a time-related hint in the reply (e.g. "next week", "end of the month", vacation mention).

Manual Scan

Click Scan now to immediately check all due Pipedrive activities. Normally this happens automatically via webhooks and a fallback scan every 4 hours.

tip

Use the manual scan after initial setup to capture existing activities.

Start Deal Manually

Click Manual start above the deal table to start automation for a specific deal:

1. Enter the Pipedrive Deal ID (found in the deal's URL in Pipedrive)
2. Click Start

Vita-Drive.Ai starts the follow-up sequence for the specified deal, regardless of AI classification.

note

Manual start skips classification. The follow-up sequence begins directly at step 1.