Overview
Automation rules in Luminous let you react to events automatically — tagging orders, sending emails, updating fields, placing orders on hold, and more. Each rule has three parts: a trigger (the event that kicks it off), one or more conditions (filters that must all pass), and one or more actions (what happens when everything checks out).
Step 1 — Choosing a Trigger
The trigger defines which event causes the rule to be evaluated. A rule is only ever evaluated when its exact trigger event fires. Available triggers include:
Sales & Fulfillment
- Order Created
- Order Updated
- Order Created or Updated (fires on either)
- Fulfillment Order Created
- Fulfillment Order Updated
- Fulfillment Order Created or Updated
- Shipment Created
Purchasing
- Supplier Purchase Order Created
- Supplier Purchase Order Updated
- Supplier Purchase Order Approved
- Supplier Purchase Order Rejected
- Supplier Purchase Order Created or Updated
Invoicing & Transfers
- Invoice Created or Updated
- Transfer Order Created
- Transfer Order Updated
- Transfer Order Created or Updated
Assembly & Production
- Assembly Order Created
- Work Order Created / Completed
- Production Batch Created / Completed
Products & Catalog
- App Integration Product Created
- App Integration Product Updated
- App Integration Product Created or Updated
Other
- SKU Mapping Completed / Failed
- Approval Status Changed
- Deal Created / Deal Stage Changed
- Receiving
- Hourly (runs once per hour)
- Daily (runs once per day)
Tip: If you want a rule to run whether an order is brand-new or has just been updated, choose the Created or Updated composite trigger rather than wiring up two separate rules.
Step 2 — Understanding Conditions
Conditions are filters applied after the trigger fires. Every condition on a rule must pass — they are evaluated with AND logic. If even one condition fails, the rule's actions are skipped entirely.
Available condition types include:
| Condition | What it checks |
|---|---|
| Item Count | Number of line items (with optional sum/aggregate) |
| Has Tag | Whether a tag is present on the order or related record |
| Has Not Performed Action | Whether this rule has already run for this record (single-fire guard) |
| Boolean | Whether a true/false field equals a specific value |
| Text | Whether a text field matches a value |
| Field | Generic field comparison (any field, any operator) |
| Line Items | A field on any line item matches a value |
| Order Status | The order's current status |
| Shipping Method | The shipping method selected |
| Product SKU | A specific SKU is present on the order |
| Order Total | The order total compared against a threshold |
| Order Weight | The order weight compared against a threshold |
| Order Age | How old the order is |
| Date | A date field compared against a value |
| Insufficient Stock | An order item does not have enough stock |
| BOM Stock Availability | The source SKU for a disassembly has sufficient stock |
Step 3 — Rule Statuses
Each rule has one of three statuses:
- Active — the rule runs normally every time its trigger fires.
- Paused — the rule is completely skipped. It will not evaluate even if its trigger fires. You must re-enable it manually.
- Error — the rule encountered a problem on its last execution. It still runs on subsequent trigger events, but the error is flagged for review. If the rule continues to fail on repeated attempts, a built-in circuit breaker will automatically pause the rule to prevent it from looping and erroring on every order indefinitely. Once you fix the underlying configuration issue, you can re-enable the rule from the Automations screen.
Why a Rule Might Never Fire
Work through this checklist if your automation is not running:
- Rule is Paused. Check the rule's status in Tools → Automation. If it shows Paused (either because you paused it manually or because the circuit breaker paused it after repeated failures), it will not run until you re-activate it.
- Wrong trigger selected. The rule only evaluates when its specific event fires. For example, a rule set to Order Created will not run when an existing order is later updated. Use Order Created or Updated if you need both cases.
- The trigger event has not occurred yet. If an order was imported before your rule existed and has never been saved since, the trigger has never fired for it. Use the Trigger: Order Created or Trigger: Order Updated bulk actions on the Sales Order Grid (Operations → Sales Order Grid; select the orders first) to manually replay the relevant event on existing orders (see the related KB article linked below).
- A condition is not met. All conditions must pass. Review each condition on the rule:
- Is the field name spelled correctly?
- Is the operator and value correct for the records you expect to match?
- If you have a Has Not Performed Action condition, the rule is intentionally blocked from firing a second time for the same record — that is working as designed.
- An unrecognized condition type. If a condition was saved with a type that is no longer supported, Luminous treats it as "not met" and skips the rule. Review your conditions for any that appear misconfigured or were set up under an older version.
- Rule is in Error status and has been auto-paused. If the rule's actions (not just conditions) have been throwing errors on every attempt, the circuit breaker may have automatically paused it. The rule's status will show as Paused. Review the action configuration (e.g., a malformed email template, an invalid field name, or a missing required setting), fix it, and re-enable the rule.
Quick Checks Summary
| Check | Where to look |
|---|---|
| Rule status | Tools → Automation → status badge on each rule card (use the Active / Paused / Error filters) |
| Trigger type | Rule builder — Trigger Settings → Event Trigger (also shown as WHEN … on the rule card) |
| Condition values | Rule detail — Conditions section |
| Manually replay event | Operations → Sales Order Grid → select orders → Actions → Bulk Actions → Trigger: Order Created (or Trigger: Order Updated) |
If the rule still does not fire after working through this checklist, contact Luminous support with the rule name and a sample order number so the activity logs can be reviewed.